The baroque Wachau Castle is a horseshoe-shaped castle complex on an island surrounded by a rectangular moat. Remarkable is the rich decoration with stucco and wall paintings, mirrors and marble fireplaces.
As early as 1218, a manor house in the form of a moated castle on the Orla River (which still feeds the moat today) was mentioned in Wachau. In 1527 the manor house was destroyed in a fire, but was rebuilt afterwards. In 1730-1741 this building was demolished and replaced by the largely unchanged new building in the style of the Dresden Baroque, which has been preserved to this day.
Since 1378 the castle was in the possession of the widely ramified von Schönfeld family. From 1841 it changed hands several times. The last one was expropriated in 1945. In GDR times, the castle was used as a living space, library, doctor's office, sales point and youth club. In 1994, the municipality of Wachau took it over, carried out initial renovation work and tried for a long time to sell it in connection with the necessary general renovation. After several attempts failed, a real estate company from Baden-Württemberg acquired the castle in 2019 to develop high-quality apartments in it. Representative parts are nevertheless to be open to the public.
