Predjama Castle

A Renaissance castle built inside a cave mouth, set under a natural rocky arch high in the cliff face specifically to make reaching it difficult. It was first mentioned in 1274, when the Patriarch of Aquileia built it in Gothic style; the Luegg family, also called the Knights of Adelsberg, later took it and enlarged it. It is best known as the seat of Erasmus of Lueg, a fifteenth-century robber baron and son of the imperial governor of Trieste, who fell out with the Habsburgs after killing Marshal Pappenheim for insulting the honour of a dead friend.