Thurnau Castle is a castle complex in Thurnau (Kulmbach district) in Upper Franconia. It is one of the largest and most important castle complexes in Northern Bavaria, with construction phases spanning from the 13th to the 19th centuries.
The oldest part of the castle is the Kemenate, the "Hus uf dem Stein" (House on the Stone), dating from the 13th century. It was built by the Knights of Förtsch. Between 1430 and 1477, the archive building and a residential wing were added. In 1581, Hans Georg von Giech commissioned Hans Schlachter to add the oratory to the Kemenate, and between 1600 and 1606, he constructed the Hans-Georgen Building in Renaissance style.
Numerous changes were made after Karl Gottfried I. von Giech attained the title of Count in 1695: He commissioned the installation of a grand, stuccoed hall on the upper floor of the Hans-Georgen Building, and the new church with its magnificent lord's gallery was built between 1701 and 1706.
Between 1729 and 1731, the Carl-Maximilian Building was added to the Upper Courtyard. Inside is the so-called Schönburg Hall, featuring landscape wallpapers from the late 18th century, which Christian Carl Ernst Heinrich von Giech had furnished for his wife, Caroline von Schönburg-Wechselburg, who came from Saxony.
In 1833, the gatehouse burned down and was rebuilt in Neo-Gothic style by 1837. At the end of the 1830s, under Hermann Giech, an archive hall was established in the Lower Courtyard, and the ancestral hall was created in the Hans-Georgen Building. The teahouse in the palace gardens was built around 1840. In the 1850s, the passageway to the church, which until then had been a simple wooden walkway, was also decorated in the Neo-Gothic style and fitted with larger windows.
For me, the Thurnau market square is one of the most beautiful I know in the region, the great castle and palace complex with a wooden bridge to the St. Laurentius church.
Thurnau Castle is a castle and palace complex located in Thurnau (Kulmbach district) in Upper Franconia. It is one of the largest and most important palace complexes in Franconia, with construction phases dating from the 13th to the 19th century.
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