Friesach (Slovene: Breže) is a municipality with 4948 inhabitants
(as of January 1, 2020) in northern Carinthia. It is the oldest city
in Carinthia and is known for its medieval buildings that are still
well preserved today, such as the city fortifications and the
water-bearing city moat.
Silver and iron finds from the La
Tène and Roman times in today's municipal area indicate that the
area that the city occupies today was settled at an early age. The
Roman imperial road Via Julia Augusta ran right through the middle
of today's city: It ran from intermediate waters to Wildbad Einöd
roughly along the current route of the B 317.
Numerous place
and river names testify to the settlement of the region by the Slavs
in the late 6th century; Friesach is also derived from the Slavonic
Breže (place near the birches). The subjugation of the Karantan
Slavs around 740 was followed by settlement by Bavarians, who came
to Carinthia in particular via the Neumarkter Sattel. In and around
Friesach a number of farms were built. In 860, Ludwig the German
transferred several goods to the Archbishop of Salzburg, Adalwin,
including the Hof ad Friesah (in front of Friesach), which is the
oldest documented mention of the place.
To the south-east of
this courtyard, Count Wilhelm founded a market between 1016 and 1028
on the basis of a privilege granted by King Konrad II, which was
abandoned around 100 years later, between 1124 and 1130.
Due
to its favorable location on one of the main trade routes between
Vienna and Venice, the market quickly rose to become an important
trading center in the Middle Ages. The place was a main staging area
in Italian traffic. In 1215 the market was raised to the status of a
city. Friesach experienced its heyday under Archbishop Eberhard II
(1200–1246) and developed into the second largest city of the
Archbishopric of Salzburg and the most important city of today's
Carinthia. The archbishops first minted the Friesacher Pfennig in
1130, which remained a supra-regional means of payment as far as
Eastern Hungary for over two centuries. The silver used in the coin
was partly mined in the nearby tent chess.
Friesach was not
only an economic, but also a religious center of that time. The
Salzburg archbishops had a residence built in Friesach and numerous
church orders also settled there. At the end of the 13th century, as
a result of clashes between the Salzburg archbishops, the Habsburgs
and Bohemia, the city was conquered, looted and destroyed by arson
three times within a few decades. On March 20, 1292, the uprising of
the Landsberg Confederation against Duke Albrecht I was temporarily
ended by the settlement of Friesach in the Friesach Castle, after
the town had been stormed and cremated by Albrecht's troops.
The city remained a part of the Prince Archbishopric of Salzburg
until 1803, but lost its importance and could no longer build on the
economic and cultural heyday of the Middle Ages.
Since
Friesach was constituted as a political municipality in 1850, its
scope has been changed several times. The cadastral community of
Töschelsdorf (1873) as well as Zeltschach (1890) and Micheldorf
(1892) split off from the original municipality. On the occasion of
the municipal structural reform in 1973, the previously independent
local parishes of St. Salvator, Zeltschach and Micheldorf were
incorporated, the latter becoming independent again in 1992.
In the course of the emerging summer tourism in Carinthia, a
beautification association was founded in Friesach in 1881, which
among other things had the goal of "preventing the destruction of
ruins and the dragging of antiquities". A sidewalk was built along
Bahnhofstrasse, the Roman and Jewish stones scattered around the
city were collected, park benches, tables and information boards
were set up, and "Bengali lighting" was installed on the town square
and the ruins. At the beginning of the 1890s, a swimming pool was
built, which was taken over by the club in 1900. Further sports
activities followed with the establishment of tennis courts and the
organization of excursions by the cycling club. This created
important foundations for the tourist infrastructure in Friesach
during this period.
The Carinthian Provincial Exhibition of
2001 under the motto Schauplatz Mittelalter showed the city in the
Middle Ages as a central theme, which should bring about sustainable
impulses for tourism. In May 2009 a construction site for a castle
building project based on the model of Guédelon was officially
opened on a hill in the south of the city. This project was intended
to show how a castle could be built using medieval working methods.
In 2011, however, the project organization was fundamentally
changed, the keep that had begun was blown up for static reasons and
the facility continued with a more tourist focus.