Brave knights in shiny armor showing their mastery, artists teaching extinct types of art, and dressed up merchants striving to sell you the best goods in the world. All this, not counting more than 70 best jugglers and acrobats of Europe, can be found in one of the Middle Ages castles in southern Austria at the foothills of the Alps. This fascinating place of joy and fun, located in the vicinity of Spittal an der Drau, is called the Sommeregg Castle.

Its first mentions were found in one of the written acts of 1187. They were signed in the abbey of the County of Tyrol. Its first owners served as ministers of Otto II. In 1275, the marriage of his granddaughter Euphemia von Ortenburg and the graph of Gorizia Albert I was held. In the XIV century, lords of the Sommeregg castle were knighted, and since that time, it got the right of being called a knights’ castle.

Unfortunately, at the beginning of the XV century, their fine dynasty ceased to exist, and all the property was passed on to a noble dynasty of Celje. The new owners preferred not to abandon the boundaries of their duchy and recognized a knight and a nobleman, Andreas von Graben, as a full owner of the castle. For many years, Sommeregg had been the main residence of an ancient Austrian dynasty Graben, and even after the death of the last graph from the Celje dynasty, Ulrich II, it had been owned by them. This had continued till the middle of the XIX century, when, as a result of the revolution of 1848, the castle and all the neighboring lands were transferred to the state. Consequently, they were opened to the public.

Nowadays, the knights’ castle of Sommeregg can be undoubtedly called a true pearl of the Middle Ages Austria. Inside the castle, ]life continues and fun does not stop. Every year, a knights tournament is held on the territory of the castle. A herald opens the tournament with the sound of a horn. The vicinity turns into a Middle Ages village with authentic taverns.

Nowadays, in a knights’ hall of the castle, there is the biggest in Central Europe museum of the Middle Ages instruments of torture. More than 100 original rare exhibits are accompanied by valuable documents of the legal history of the Middle Ages.