page_title: Austrian walled towns
section_title: Early walled towns
hierarchical_section_title: Austrian walled towns / Types of town wall and layout / Early walled towns
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Leopold III. der Heilige vor Klosterneuburg, Babenberger Stammbaum, um 1490, Stift Klosterneuburg.
context_page_description: Walled towns in Austria started to appear in the 11th century. Their establishment was closely connected with the development of Austria as a march of the Holy Roman Empire and in particular by the Stauffenberg Emperors and their Marcher Lords, the Babenbergs. In present-day Austria, there are 106 towns or cities that were walled. The walls of Radstadt, Freiburg, Hainburg and Drosendorf survive almost intact, and Austria has some of the most impressive walled towns in Europe.
  Other cities or towns such as Vienna, Salzburg and St Pölten have had their defences almost completely obliterated. In Austria, the procedure for granting civic status or creating a Stadt was relatively simple. Initially, a local lord or official ministerialis could petition for market rights or Marktrect. At that point, the town would be laid out by a surveyor and it would have been surrounded by an earthen-banked enclosure surmounted with a vertical wooden palisade. Often a stone gatehouse or Tor would be built for the collection of custom dues from traders coming to the market.
context_section_description: From the 10th century, following the defeat of the Magyars at the battle of Lechfeld in 955, the Bavarians started to establish themselves around Melk and Herzogenburg in Lower Austria in the so-called "Kernland". In 976 Leopold I of Babenberg became the first margave of the "Ostmark" of the Holy Roman Empire and the first reference to "Ostarrîchi" occurs in 996, which gives Austria its name. Leopold, his son Henry I and his grandson Adalbert, expanded their territory into the Wienerwald in the east up to the Hungarian border. Under the Babenberg Ernest the Brave (1055–1075) sees the appearance of the Kuenringer, a family of Imperial officials or "Ministerialis" who played an important part in the colonisation of the Waldviertel. The Kuenringer worked closely with Leopold II (1075–95) who moved his main residence from Melk to Gars am Kamp. It seems likely that the first widespread construction of stone walls for towns starts in the late 12th century or early 13th century. The Kuenringer established five towns, Dürnstein, Zwettl, Weitra, Waidhofen an der Thaya and Zistersdorf, the first four of which survive to-day as remarkably well preserved examples of walled towns. The Kuenringer also held Litschau from 1237 to 1297 and may have been responsible for the walls of this town as well.
caption: Leopold III, Margrave of Austria. The margrave who granted early charters including Krems, Vienna and Klosterneuberg
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