Kreuzbergl Slate

Welcome to the second part devoted to Klagenfurt’s rich stone heritage. Because Klagenfurt is not made only of the pale, luminous Pörtschach marble, but also of a dark, metamorphic stone. It is the stone used, for example, for the Dragon Fountain in Neuer Platz — but we also find it in the plinths of the Landhaus, in courtyards, in the foundations of many buildings. This is Kreuzbergl slate. This stone comes from the small range of hills to the west of the city. It was quarried locally, in numerous quarries, truly numerous, scattered throughout the area. It is a metamorphic rock; a rock transformed over time. It is millions, indeed hundreds of millions of years old. Originally it lay deep underground, in the bowels of the earth, where it was transformed into amphibolite. It later rose towards the surface, but not directly: it remained for a long time at a depth of 5 or 10 kilometres, where it underwent a further transformation, becoming green schist.
And it is precisely this transformation that gives it its green colour. Otherwise, it would have remained black, like amphibolite. Today it can be seen all over the Kreuzbergl. It is a very distinctive stone, extremely resistant, with only a slight schistosity, precisely because it was originally a much more compact rock. One of these quarries can still be seen today: it is what is now the Botanical Garden of the regional museum, the Carinthian Botanic Centre. There are also other small quarries behind the little church on the Kreuzbergl, if you walk westwards towards the lake, from which this stone was extracted. And it is precisely with this slate that the Dragon in Neuer Platz was made. It was carved from a single block and then transported, with great effort, to Neuer Platz. But its shape — or rather, its dimensions — have an even more curious story behind them. Around 1350, in a gravel pit north of Klagenfurt, an enormous skull was found: an upper jaw belonging to an unknown animal. People immediately thought of the Lindwurm, the monster which, according to legend, lived in the marshes south of the city and abducted, perhaps killed men. The skull was hung in the mayor’s hall, like a trophy. In Alter Platz, in the old town hall, it was publicly displayed: hanging from chains, to show that the monster had been defeated, that the city was safe. Then, in 1848, a palaeontologist arrived. He examined the skull and made a discovery: it belonged to a woolly rhinoceros, an animal from the Ice Age. It was a relative of the modern rhinoceros, but covered in hair, like the mammoth. It lived on the edges of the glaciers. From that moment on, the skull lost its legendary meaning for the city. It was transferred to the newly founded museum, to the Natural Science Association of Carinthia, and thus became recognized as the oldest fossil discovered in Austria. It was the first true fossil discovered in the country and preserved to the present day. And it is still there today, from trophy to museum exhibit.