Is the castle.. . A castle?

[cvetkakocj@rogers.com]

You know, it doesn't really look like a castle.
No keep or Bailey, a huge unprotected entrance, windows al over the walls and a single prominent tower...
With the two side walls, it looks a lot more like a fortified Italian town.

Hi, David, I believe you are right to question if the VM sketch was a picture of a castle. I believe it is a sketch of the Carthusian monastery in Gairach (Jurklošter, Slovenia). I have several reasons to believe that. First, the medieval castles were usually on the hilltops, mostly for defense purposes), and the building in the VM picture seems to be in the middle between two mountains. Also, the central point of the castles was not a church. The chapels in the castles were hardly visible from the outside. The castles also had build-in observation towers, while in the VM picture, the observation towers are on each side, just like on the picture of Gairach.
There is also no way of telling if the VM picture is the sketch of the existing place or a sketch how to rebuild it, in which case the place might not be rebuilt exactly the way it was drawn. Since the place was destroyed several times by the Turkish invasions, the actual building might not look exactly the same, but the two mountains, the church and the two towers are the focal point. The two pictures I am enclosing are from the 17th century, based on the description of the monastery and the way it looked over time.
In the VM, the Carthusian symbol is close to this picture, as well as some free-standing observation towers. According to my reading, the label next to the watchtower reads: osvoor dali - which in Slovenian means 'give warning'.
Another convincing clue is also the fact that in this region of Slovenia, the similar shapes of the Latin letters were used, as is evident from several comparative manuscripts (in Latin, German, and Czeck).