The Municipality of Celje has started with emergency work on the upper part of Friderik’s Tower in the Old Castle. The municipality informs that the renovation work is valued at 189.000 euros. The Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Slovenia, which will oversee the work on this cultural monument, has already given its consent for the renovation work.
The Old Castle was first built in the second half of the 12th Century by the Vovbržans, counts from the Koroška region, which owned Celje and its surroundings until the death of the last Vovbržan in 1322. Following decades of fighting the caste then came to the hands of their heirs, the Žovneški family, later referred to as the Counts of Celje. The Žovneški family (also known as the Lords of Sanneck) started work on the castle making it more comfortable for living. It is then that they erected the 23-meter-high tower consisting of four floors. It is called Friderik’s Tower because of a legend, which says that Friderik’s father kept his son locked in the defense tower because he refused to allow his son to marry Veronika Deseniška. In the centuries to come the tower’s image and purpose changed many times.
In the year 1803 the castle was bought by a farmer called Gorišek, who started using the site as a quarry. In the middle of the 19th century the castle ruins then came into the hands of Styrian regional governors. Efforts to restore the castle began with the establishment of Celje’s Museum society in 1882, and continue to this day. In the last decade the original image of the Old Castle is slowly being returned to it.