Burg Wels, Medieval castle and museum in Wels, Austria

Burg Wels is a castle-like fortress in the southeast of Wels' city centre, first recorded in 776 as Castrum Uueles. It began as a timber structure with palisades; stone construction followed in the 12th or 13th century. The late-Gothic rebuild of 1508–1514 gave the complex its present form, with a west wing, an east wing added in 1865, and a castle garden whose perimeter wall carries a lapidarium of gravestones from the 15th to 19th centuries.

Burg Wels appears in 776 as Castrum Uueles, then a wooden structure with palisades; stone building began only in the 12th or 13th century. Around 1200 it was pledged to Duke Leopold VI of Babenberg, who bought it in 1222; after the Babenberg line died out it passed to the Habsburgs. Emperor Maximilian I had it rebuilt in late Gothic style from 1508 to 1514 and died there on 12 January 1519.

The castle houses the Wels City Museum and the Museum of the Expellees. The city museum covers local history and folklore; the second documents the displacement and resettlement of German-speaking expellees after 1945. The Lapidarium along the north wall of the west wing and the west side of the garden wall holds gravestones from the 15th to 19th centuries, moved here from the parish church, the first parish cemetery and the cemetery on today's Marktplatz used until 1888.

The castle stands in the south-east of Wels city centre and is run by the city as a museum. The lapidarium is not inside the exhibition rooms: its gravestones and monuments from the 15th to 19th centuries are set on the north wall of the west wing and the west side of the garden wall, with individual pieces in Room II, the antechambers and the staircase.

The lapidarium is set into the north wall of the west wing and the west side of the garden wall: gravestones and monuments from the 15th to the 19th century, some only fragments, moved here from the Stadtpfarrkirche, the first parish cemetery and the burial ground used at today's Marktplatz until 1888.