Mittersill Castle

It sits on the northern side of the Salzach valley some 140m above the city of Mittersill in the Pinzgau region in the Federal state of Salzburg, Austria.

The first records known of the castle date to the 12th century while Pinzgau was under the control of the Duchy of Bavaria, when the Counts of Lechsgemünd (subsequently: Mittersill) decided to establish their family seat there.

The site had been chosen on the northern side of the Salzach river because of its ideal location in not only being able to control merchant traffic from Pass Thurn but also that exiting from the southern Felber valley.

[1] Notable guests during this period include Dutch Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard, the Shah of Persia, Clark Gable, Henry Ford, Bob Hope and Aristotle Onassis.

[5] In the 1930s the author Ian Fleming would occasionally stay at the sports club of Schloss Mittersill in the Austrian Alps, following its period as an Institute for research into so-called "race science this pseudo-scientific research centre is stated to have inspired Fleming's creation of the character Blofeld's own centre of Piz Gloria in the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service.