Voitsberg

Voitsberg grew beneath a castle above a narrow stretch of the Kainach in western Styria. In 1164 the Styrian ruler Ottokar IV ordered the castle built to watch the road between Graz and Judenburg, on land belonging to Saint Lambrecht Abbey. The settlement below had a market by 1196 and was described as a town in 1220. Jews are recorded in Voitsberg from 1358; they were forced to leave in 1497 under the order expelling Styria's Jewish communities.