Discover Friesach: Castle, museum and city moat

Friesach is well suited to a trip where medieval city history is not limited to a single building. Petersberg Castle, the town museum and the water-filled city moat reveal different sides of the city; there is also a castle-building project, a chocolate experience world and a nature exhibition. This lets you combine historic sites, crafts and other topics during your stay.

Petersberg Castle, the museum and performances

Petersberg Castle was first mentioned in 860 and served as a fortress and residence for the Archbishops of Salzburg. These two functions provide a historical context for the site: Petersberg is associated with both military use and the archbishops’ history as residents.

The Petersberg town museum is housed in the castle complex’s chapel tower. Spread across six floors, it displays historical objects, including Roman medallions, Gothic keystones, Friesach silver pennies, weapons and Romanesque frescoes. This selection places coins alongside architectural fragments, and weapons alongside wall paintings. The museum therefore offers several ways to explore historical subjects rather than focusing on just one group of objects.

The Friesach Castle Courtyard Plays also take place at Petersberg every year, where they stage plays for visitors. For travellers interested in theatre, this offers a different point of interest from the museum objects. The annual performances add stage productions at the same venue to the cultural programme.

City history through buildings and the building process

The Friesach Castle-Building Experience takes a different approach: a hilltop castle is being built on a hill south of the medieval city. Traditional crafts passed down from long ago are used, with no modern equipment. The focus is not just on the castle as a building, but also on the methods used to construct it. Compared with Petersberg Castle, first mentioned in 860, this shifts the focus from a historic site to building with inherited craft knowledge.

Another feature of the medieval cityscape is the water-filled city moat. It is 820 metres long and surrounds the Old Town to the north, east and south. Its length and course give a clear sense of the scale of the Old Town’s layout: the moat is not just a single structure, but extends along a considerable stretch of its edges.

There is also a clear point of reference for arriving: Friesach railway station is less than a ten-minute walk from the main square. If you arrive by train, you can use the main square as a landmark when starting your exploration. This practical information about getting there complements the historical topics with the walking time between the station and the centre.

Chocolate and nature as other themes

The chocolate experience world is dedicated to Craigher chocolate and how it is made. Visitors follow the cacao bean’s journey all the way to handmade chocolate. Tasting stations and films show how Craigher chocolates are made by hand with great care. The experience combines tasting with insights into the production process: the journey to the finished product is just as much in focus as the product itself.

The “Living Room Nature” exhibition presents nature as a habitat and covers topics including wildlife, forests, butterflies and fish. It thus combines a look at habitats with specific examples from forests and wildlife. After the castle, museum and city moat, nature offers a distinct focus for your stay. Together with the castle-building project and chocolate experience world, it shows just how varied the topics are that you can consider when planning your trip to Friesach.

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Go to the main travel overview: Sankt Veit An Der Glan.