In Lower Engadin, Graubünden, next to erstwhile municipality of Tarasp, sits the castle known as Tarasp Castle. It is a nationally significant Swiss heritage site. Most likely constructed in the eleventh century, Tarasp Castle may have been constructed as early as the tenth. The term Wild Earth, Terra Aspera, may allude to the recently discovered areas in the Inn River Valley. By 1089, when Ulrich von Tarasp was named in a papal mandate addressed to the Bishop of Chur, they had taken on the name of the fortress. As part of their plan to establish a barony in the hitherto deserted high alpine valley, the family established Scuol Monastery at the same time as Marienberg Abbey. At this point, the castle was made up of a chapel with a bell tower that doubled as a guard tower, and a ring wall. A ring wall, a portion of the chapel, and its bell tower served as the initial defenses of the site. West of the chapel, a massive palas with walls two meters thick was constructed in the thirteenth century, and it eventually became the heart of castle. It is likely that the residential wings date back to the 13th century as well. The castle was attacked multiple times and burnt twice throughout the 16th and 17th century. Throughout those years, numerous reconstructions and renovations were made to the dwelling wings in particular. The lower floors received wood decorations, new windows pierced through the rock walls, and vaulted ceilings. The chapel has been incorporated within the castle-ring-wall. Only remnants of the 12th-century paintings that adorned the apse still survive. In the seventeenth century, the interior was refurbished. The freestanding bell tower was most likely constructed as a watchtower and church tower combined. It has a five-story height with an ornate Baroque onion dome on top. To defend the castle from attacks, the two half towers and the zwinger, or outer courtyard, were most likely constructed in the sixteenth century. The castle underwent renovations in 1714–1715 and Iin1732. The outer walls are coated with white plaster and adorned with late fifteenth-century coats of arms. Although they have since faded, these paintings were still visible in 1900. A handful, though, have recently undergone restoration efforts [Information and Image Credit : Tarasp_Castle, Wikipedia] [Wikipedia-Link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasp_Castle ] [Image : Tarasp village and castle; Wikipedia-Image-Author : Roland Zumbühl] [Image Availed Under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license; (Please Relate to Individual Image URL for More Usage Property)] [License-Link : https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en ] [Wikipedia-Image-Source-Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tarasp-03.jpg ] #History#Architecture#Castles
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Monuments and Architecture
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