Schloss Katzenberg, Renaissance château in Kirchdorf am Inn, Austria.
Schloss Katzenberg is a Renaissance castle in Kirchdorf am Inn built with a square layout and open arcaded galleries surrounding an inner courtyard. The four sides of the structure display consistent Renaissance features with similarly styled facades and passageways.
Katzenberg was first recorded in 1196 as Burg Chotzenperig, held by the bishops of Passau, who enfeoffed the counts of Ortenburg in 1251. From 1300 to 1525 the Mautner family of Burghausen held the fief; after 1595 it passed by inheritance to Count Burkhard von Taufkirchen, under whose descendants the castle was rebuilt and baroquised in the 17th century. A fire in 1629 caused severe damage, and in 1705 Bavarian peasants seized the castle during the uprising.
The ground floor holds a bookbinding museum showing ornate Bibles and prayer books. It documents the publishing and bookbinding history of J. Steinbrener, the firm the Bohemian factory-owning family acquired the estate from in 1931; at its peak the company employed up to 1,000 people and had branches in over 65 countries.
Schloss Katzenberg stands on a Quaternary terrace of the Inn, on the old Roman road from Altheim to Passau in the Katzenberg district of Kirchdorf am Inn. The inner moat survives partly as a park and partly in its original form, so the grounds can be walked between the wall and the former ditch. The binding museum occupies the ground floor of the castle.
The castle chapel holds a ceiling stucco dated 1680, portals and stucco figures attributed to Giovanni Pietro Camuzzi, a pupil of Giovanni Battista Carlone, and frescoes from around 1690. Its altarpiece of St Sebastian was painted in 1731 by Paul Erlmiller of Braunau.
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