Coira Castle (Italy)

The Bishop of Chur, Henry IV of Montfort, after the victorious conclusion of a feud against the mud judges on the basis of a sentence of 27 February 1253 receives the right to "build without hindrance any castle or fortress in a place at will between Cleven and Laces ".

The castle's name comes to us for the first time in a document that Bishop Heinrich published on 21 February 1259 in "Curberch". The name and location of the castle at the entrance to the Matscher valley, where Matsch's governors had their ancestral castle, make it certain that the castle was the castle that the bishop had been authorized to build "freely before".

The buildings of the Romanesque period The most ancient nucleus of the complex consists of the keep on the side of the hill, the palaces built on a rectangular plan to the south and the walls enclosing a large courtyard. From the previous tower, called Pfaffeneck, where the old path of the castle leads past its destruction in 1358 only the foundations.

The buildings of the Gothic period The complex has maintained its highly medieval appearance until the beginning of the 16th century. With the change of ownership at the beginning of the 16th century, extensive renovations and new buildings began, such as the external courtyard, the garden terraces and the kennel. Further residential buildings have been added between Palas and Bergfried, grouped around a large courtyard, the first floor of which houses a portico. The Palas was raised by a wall and equipped with a crenellated crown; In addition, there was a bay window on the south side and a late-Gothic room on the ground floor.

Churburg becomes a Renaissance castle In the second half of the 16th century, the old castle was transformed into a magnificent Renaissance castle. In the 18th century, the construction and expansion of the third floor of the building as a guest wing with biblical images of wallpaper and glazed tiled stoves. The ladder for the "Matscher Saal" replaces a precedent that connected the portico with the third floor of the north wing.