Brežice Castle

Contact

This logo is missing!

If you have it, please email it to us.

Grad Brežice

Cesta prvih borcev 1, SI-8250 Brežice

http://www.posavski-muzej.si

ivan.kastelic@guest.arnes.si

Phone386 (0) 7 466 0511, 386 (0) 7 466 0518

ProprietorBrežice Municipality

Abstract

Brežice Castle is an excellent example of fortified Renaissance castle architecture on a plain. Its ground plan is a slightly irregular rectangle, having its corners fortified with powerful round defence towers, in some places as thick as 4 metres, equipped with numerous crenels. The building is surrounded by a spacious bailey, landscaped as a park with a fountain in the middle.

The castle building itself has two storeys. The heavily-fortified ground floor is made of cut stone in the shape of an inclined wall, becoming vertical at the level of the first floor; the inclined and the vertical parts are divided by a stone protuberance. The west wall of the castle, between the north and south defence towers, has at the bailey side on both stories long arcade corridors with elegantly-shaped Tuscan columns. The south east and the west tower are connected on the first and second floor by a narrow corridor with preserved crenels. At the bailey side of the north and west castle wing there are two sundials painted on a large wall surface. The first measured time in the morning, the second in the afternoon.

The interior of the castle has been a luxurious Baroque residence since the times of the early Attem Counts. The focus of the east wing is the Great Hall, the largest Baroque painted secular room in Slovenia, which measures 35 metres long by 10 metres wide and 8 metres high and is decorated with images from Ovid's Metamorphoses and other legends (1699-1703) by Frančišek Karl Remb. In the west wing a Renaissance staircase was built featuring frescoes of Hercules' story (1721-1727) by Franz Ignac Flurer, who also decorated the castle chapel with frescos of the Glorification of the Cross. The altar in the chapel is from the workshop of Luka Mislej and dates from around 1718.

Today all the rooms except the cellar are used by the museum and for cultural events, and the Great Hall is the main venue of the SEVIQC Brežice Festival.

Since 1949 the castle has housed the Museum of the Posavje Region, Brežice.