Neumelans: A Renaissance Aristocratic Residence in South Tyrol
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page9 sections
History
Neumelans is a late-sixteenth-century Renaissance aristocratic residence in Sand in Taufers, Italy, built in 1582–1583 by Hans Fieger of Melans. Its construction established a substantial country residence for the family that had administered justice in the Taufers valley since 1507.
The Fieger family and construction
Hans Fieger served as the Pflegrichter, a judicial and administrative official responsible for a local district, at Taufers. He built Neumelans within twelve months, completing the residence in 1583. The Fieger family had acquired the right to administer justice in the valley from Maximilian I of Habsburg, who became Holy Roman Emperor in 1508, for 27,000 florins in 1507.
The name Neumelans refers to Melans, another residence that the Fieger family owned and built near Absam in the Inn Valley. The name therefore connected the new residence with the family’s earlier property and place of origin.
Later ownership and residents
Ownership changed in 1708, when Neumelans passed to the Zeiller von Zeillheim family. In 1815 it came to the von Ottenthal family, who restored the building in 1864. After the von Ottenthals died out in 1956, the residence passed by inheritance to the Schober family, which remains its owner.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, Franz von Ottenthal worked at Neumelans as a country physician and as a member of the Tyrolean parliament. He left extensive notes on his medical practice. The historian Emil von Ottenthal also came from Neumelans and grew up there.
Neumelans during the Second World War
During the German occupation of Italy, Neumelans lay within the Operations Zone of the Alpine Foothills, a German-administered occupation zone in northern Italy during the final phase of the Second World War. The residence and its gatehouse or carriage house served as depots for artworks looted from major Italian museums. Other works were concealed at Neumelans to protect them from looting and bombing.
At the end of the war, Allied forces recovered many works stolen by retreating German soldiers from the galleries of Florence. Some had been evacuated to Villa Bossi-Pucci at Montagnana, in Montespertoli, while their intended destination was Austria. In summer 1945, the Monuments Men, Allied specialists who located, protected, and recovered cultural property displaced or looted during the war, arranged the works’ return to their original institutions.
Remains
Neumelans survives as a single imposing four-storey residence with an almost regular arrangement of windows. Four corner turrets, projecting oriel windows, and a high slate-covered roof give the building its distinctive Renaissance country-residence character. The roof has a half-hipped form, while the turrets are square at their bases and become round in the roof region.
Interior furnishings
Rooms and tiled stoves
Interior rooms with wood paneling and coffered ceilings are arranged around large corridor halls. The halls have vaulted ceilings on the ground floor and flat ceilings on the upper floors. Seventeenth-century majolica-tiled stoves remain inside the residence, including the 3.14-metre-high Perkhofer stove on the principal floor. Dating to around 1650, this tower-shaped stove is crowned with decorative tiles.
Chapel
The chapel preserves a fourteenth-century wooden statue known as the “Madonna with the Sword.” The statue forms part of the residence’s surviving religious furnishings.
Gatehouse and carriage house
The gatehouse or carriage house is an associated component of the Neumelans complex. During the Second World War, it shared the residence’s role as a depot for artworks removed from Italian museums.
Nearby sites
