Magdalensberg is a municipality in the district of Klagenfurt-Land

Klagenfurt-Land

Bezirk Klagenfurt-Land is a district of the state ofCarinthia in Austria.-Municipalities:Towns are indicated in boldface; market towns in italics; suburbs, hamlets and other subdivisions of a municipality are indicated in small characters.*Ebenthal **Aich an der Straße, Berg, Ebenthal,...

 in Carinthia

Carinthia (state)

Carinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...

 in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

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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 ("Katastralgemeinde

Katastralgemeinde

A Katastralgemeinde , a German word , is a cadastral subdivision of municipalities in the nations of Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Italian provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino, Gorizia, Trieste, and in Slovenia.A cadastral community records property ownership in a cadastre,...

n"): Zinsdorf, Reigersdorf, Ottmanach, Wutschein, Gammersdorf, Schurianhof, Timenitz, Vellach, Freudenberg, Portendorf, Zeiselberg, Lassendorf, St. Thomas

Name

The municipality took its name ("Madeline'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

Noricum

Noricum, in ancient geography, was a Celtic kingdom stretching over the area of today's Austria and a part of Slovenia. It became a province of the Roman Empire...

. 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 have been 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

Virunum

Claudium Virunum was a Roman city in the province of Noricum, on today's Zollfeld in the Austrian State of Carinthia. Virunum may also have been the name of the older Celtic-Roman settlement on the hilltop of Magdalensberg nearby....

, 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

Noreia

Noreia was an ancient city in the eastern Alps, the capital of the kingdom of Noricum. Its location has so far not been determined precisely.Some researchers think that Noreia can be identified with the excavated Celtic-Roman settlement on the Magdalensberg in Carinthia, Austria. Others place it in...

 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.

Famous

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

Klagenfurt

-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...

. 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.

History

According to Barry Cunliffe, Noricum was from the time of the Roman Republic a friendly ally of Rome. Trade between the two states was intense, particularly from Noricum's iron, gold, and agricultural produce. "The adjacent trading centre of Magdalensberg consisted of two elements, a native oppidum on the summit of the mountain and a Roman trading colony below. The oppidum was the principal administrative centre of the kingdom and the residence of the royal Noricum family, and as such provided a natural focus for Roman merchants. The Roman colony developed on a south-facing terrace below the oppidum. The earliest buildings were of timber and can be dated to c. 100 BC but by 30 BC the traders' houses were built in stone and were decorated with murals depicting classical mythological scenes painted by immigrant Roman artists. The focus of the colony was a large open forum where the commercial transactions would have been carried out. The Roman merchants who lived and worked here were representatives of the great business houses, mainly from Aquileia, and like all traders in foreign lands they surrounded themselves with the outward and visible signs of their own culture. The scale of the trade with Rome was considerable and acted as a spur to local production; it also introduced the Roman lifestyle to the natives who, over the decades, increasingly embraced Roman luxuries and Roman manners" (Cunliffe, 2001).

People

Ottmanach, one of the constituent villages of the municipality, was the original home of the singer and light music composer Udo Jürgens

Udo Jürgens

Udo Jürgens is an Austrian composer and singer of popular music whose career spans over fifty years...

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