Pfeilburg Castle is situated directly on the fortress wall and is one of the most attractive sights in the city centre. Winner of the Austrian Museum Prize, the three floors of the exhibition space are dedicated to urban and contemporary history.
The core of the building, which is known as the “Schwartzturm” (Black Tower), dates back to the thirteenth century and is one of the few remaining preserved mediaeval residential towers in Styria. The building that belongs to the tower was constructed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was the owners’ residence.The first owner was Hans Pfeilberg, who acquired the property in 1490. It is after him that the castle is named. In 1691 Christoph Liscutin, who came from Italy, bought the house and built Austria's first tobacco factory here, thus making an important decision for the town that would last into the twentieth century.The “Kruzitürken Museum”, whose name derives from the old curse that addresses Eastern Styria’s double burden of attacks from the Turks and Kurucs, documents the eventful history of the “city on the border”.On the second floor, the Pfeilburg Museum devotes special attention to the production of tobacco products and the culture of conspicuous consumption. More than 300 exhibits, some of them from the old Tobacco Museum in Vienna, depict in detail 300 years of tobacco history and smoking culture.