Vipavski Križ, formerly Sv.Križ ("St.Cross") is as a settlement mentioned for the first time in 1030 because of the at the time existing church of St.Cross. The hill on which the village is located was already populated before the Roman era. In 1482 the settlement was reinforced by a surrounding defence wall because of the threatening Turkish invasion. The castle explicitly is for the first time mentioned in 1535 but somewhere we can find the information that it was built already at the end of the 15^th century together with defence walls - reinforced Tabor.
Further reinforcing of the settlement was accelerated by the wars between Habsburgs and Venetians. Habsburgs who succeeded counts of Gorica pawned the castle to Count Vitto della Torre, the son of the first count of St.Cross Ivan Feb. Vito's son Franc, with german nickname count Thurn from St.Cross, then, when he became regional leader of Goriška, in 1547 sold the dominion to his relative Ahac from Pliberk's branch of counts Thurn. In 1589 the castle once again becomes the property of Torres - Thurns of St.Cross and they sold it to counts Attems in 1605 which remained the owners in the following centuries. When the Vipava valley was occupied by French in 1809 the Attems' left the Cross for a while and later returned. Soon after they returned they started to sell their estates. The last lord of the castle Karel Nikolaj Attems abandoned the building in 1842, when he moved to Furlanija. In 1885 only about one sixth was bought by school pledge - fund and reconstructed it to a school which is still active.

The castle of St.Cross was built by Italian models which take their motives directly from antique tradition. It is designed as low, symmetrical Renaissance small castle with four single-storey residential wings and four immense circular towers - roundels in the corners, which do not exceed the height of the remaining buildings. Such formally clean and in proportions symmetrical Renaissance castle building cannot be found anywhere else in Slovenia. The castle which from the outside, because of its massive towers - around two meters thick in the ground floor, shows an image of typical fortification but when entering the courtyard it look like the manor because the wings with their arrangement and characteristics of their windows and other openings do not have fortification characteristics; on the contrary, everything speaks of comfort and luxury of life of its former residents.