rotate subplot with respect to whole figure

Dear experts,

is there a way of rotating a single subplot in a multi-faceted figure with
respect to the others?
i.e. I have a contour plot representing a 2D histogram and on the top of
it and to its left two line plots, representing the respective 1D
components. I am aware of the possibility to swap x- and y- coordinates in
analogy of one example in the gallery where they use vertical bar graphs
for the y-component and bar graphs for the x-component, so essentially I
can do what I want, but I thought that there might be an alternative way.
Thanks a lot!

cheers
ben