Schloss Kainberg, Renaissance castle in Kumberg, Austria

Schloss Kainberg is a three-storey Renaissance castle built between 1570 and 1575, forming a regular square around a rectangular arcaded courtyard. The arcades on three sides were mostly glazed in the 19th century, and square corner towers with pyramid roofs stand at the four corners. A massive clock and bell tower with a lantern-crowned roof rises from the middle of the western wing.

A fortified court existed here by 1218, when Otto von Chunperch is named as its holder; it stayed with the von Kainberg family for over 300 years. Gilg von Saurau acquired it in 1547, and after two months under Melchior Huber it passed in 1570 to Otto VI von Ratmannsdorf, who rebuilt it as a Renaissance castle between 1570 and 1575. His Protestant daughter had to leave Styria in 1629, and the estate went to Siegmund Friedrich von Gleispach; in 1841 it reached the Wimpffen family, who still occupy it.

The chapel in the clock tower of the western wing is consecrated to the Three Kings. The castle has belonged to the Wimpffen family since 1841, when Count Franz Karl Eduard von Wimpffen acquired it, and the family still lives there today.

The castle sits on a steep hillside north of Kumberg town center at an elevation of 542 meters and can be reached via Schloß-Kainberg-Weg. The uphill walk requires sturdy footwear and some physical effort to reach the top.

In a corner room, a coffered ceiling with painted wood grain survives from the Renaissance, alongside an 18th-century stove. The north wing, the oldest part dating to the 15th century, keeps much of its original interior fittings on the upper floors.