Magdalensberg

Coat of arms

Magdalensberg

Location within Austria

Coordinates: 46°42′N 14°26′E / 46.700°N 14.433°ECoordinates: 46°42′N 14°26′E / 46.700°N 14.433°E

Country

Government

• Mayor

Andreas Scherwitzl

Area

• Total

42.89 km² (16.56 sq mi)

Elevation

450 m (1,480 ft)

Population (1 January 2016)

• Total

3,321

• Density

77/km² (200/sq mi)

Time zone

CET (UTC+1)

• Summer (DST)

CEST (UTC+2)

Postal code

9064

Area code

04224

Magdalensberg (Slovene: Štalenska gora) is a municipality in the district of Klagenfurt-Land in Carinthia in Austria.

Magdalensberg lies at the foot of the Magdalensberg in the Klagenfurt basin in the lower Gurk valley. The Gurk and the Raba flow through the municipality.

The municipality comprises 40 villages and hamlets:
Christofberg, Deinsdorf, Dürnfeld, Eibelhof, Eixendorf, Farchern, Freudenberg, Gammersdorf, Geiersdorf, Göriach, Gottesbichl, Großgörtschach, Gundersdorf, Haag, Hollern, Kleingörtschach, Kreuzbichl, Kronabeth, Lassendorf, Latschach, Leibnitz, Magdalensberg, Matzendorf, Ottmanach, Pirk, Pischeldorf, Portendorf, Reigersdorf, Schöpfendorf, Sillebrücke, St. Lorenzen, St. Martin, St. Thomas, Stuttern, Timenitz, Treffelsdorf, Vellach, Wutschein, Zeiselberg, Zinsdorf.
and is composed of 13 cadastral subdivisions ("Katastralgemeinden"): Zinsdorf, Reigersdorf, Ottmanach, Wutschein, Gammersdorf, Schurianhof, Timenitz, Vellach, Freudenberg, Portendorf, Zeiselberg, Lassendorf, St. Thomas All the villages have also Slovenian names.

The municipality took its name ("Magdalene's Mountain") from the mountain on its territory, which is renowned for the extensive Celtic settlement on the hilltop, which was probably the royal capital of the Celtic kingdom of Noricum. The excavations that have been going on for a century now have, however, so far not brought to light any traces of the Celtic town. This might be due to the fact that the excavations were focussed on the spectacular centre of the settlement, which was obviously completely "upgraded" by the Romans from about 50 BC onwards, before they started on building the municipium of Virunum, the new capital of the Roman Province of Noricum at the foot of the mountain. The Celtic settlement's name is still unknown. For a while it was assumed to be the Noreia of ancient sources, then this idea was rejected, and now the archaeologists in charge of the excavations think that the Roman city of Virunum had probably been given the name of its Celtic hilltop predecessor.

The most spectacular find was made as early as 1502: a perfect statue of a young man. The beautiful "Jüngling vom Helenenberg", so named after the mountain's name at that time which was Helenenberg, was a European sensation and as the finest example of Greek sculpturing in the monarchy has found its way into the Vienna Museum of Art. For tourism's sake the young man was renamed "Jüngling vom Magdalensberg" and copies of the statue can now be seen both in the Magdalensberg museum and in Klagenfurt. The "original" was then identified as a Roman copy of a Greek original of the 5th century BC; recently, however, it turned out to be an early Renaissance copy of an original Roman copy of the Greek original both of which had gone lost, yet their beauty has been preserved.

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Wikipedia