Goričko Castle

Goričko Castle rises on a steep basalt‑tuff hill in the eponymous village at the north‑western edge of the Goričko Highlands. King Béla III incorporated the surrounding estate into the Kingdom of Hungary and, in 1183, granted it to the Cistercian monastery of Szentgotthárd. The estate, called Lyndwa, is first mentioned in 1208, while the earliest written record of the castle dates to 1275. Archaeological digs prove a stronghold stood here as early as the 11th century, and legend attributes its founding to the Knights Templar. The castle reached its present footprint in the 16th–17th centuries and was enlarged and refurbished in the 18th–19th. One of the mid‑16th‑century towers houses a chapel whose Baroque belfry, designed by architect Josef Hueber in 1751 (restored 2001), crowned the castle’s baroquisation.