Rovine Castel Fingeller - Ruine Walbenstein

The castle ruin Rovine Castel Fingeller - Ruine Walbenstein sits at the entrance of the Sarntal Valley in South Tyrol. It stands on a steep rock that storms rarely reach, within the city of Bolzano. You can reach it by the old Sarner road. The castle first appears in documents from 1184 and 1185, under the names Vallewenstan and Walbenstain.

Gottschalk von Severs, a ministerial of the Counts of Eppan, first called himself after Walbenstein in the late 1150s. His adoption of the name suggests the castle was newly built shortly before 1184. Today a mostly collapsed ring wall encloses a higher, two-part residential section and a lower three-storey building. The main walls run to about 1.8 metres thick, while the ring wall reaches just 1.2. That thinness sufficed because the site made heavy siege gear such as battering rams impossible. The ruin belongs to an early generation of South Tyrol's castles: exposed sites, small size, no keep. Leuchtenburg, Kasatsch, Steinegg and Afing share the type, while thirteenth-century Boymont, Haselburg and Runkelstein belong to the later generation.

People long believed the castle fell into disrepair before 1300. The surviving loopholes tell another story: they are shaped for firearms, not for bows or crossbows. The abandonment therefore came later than once assumed. A fresco of about 1390 in the Room of Games at Runkelstein Castle shows Walbenstein still intact.