Tratzberg Castle: A Late-Medieval and Renaissance Castle in Austria
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page16 sections
History
Tratzberg Castle is a preserved hilltop castle in Austria, rebuilt from 1500 in the late-medieval and early Renaissance periods. It stands on a rocky ridge above the Inn Valley between Stans and Jenbach, and is regarded as one of Austria’s best-preserved castles. Its surviving rooms and furnishings reflect the changing fortunes of noble families, mining wealth, and Habsburg-connected owners.
Medieval predecessor and Tänzl rebuilding
A castle called Trazperch was recorded at the site in 1296. Archduke Sigmund, the fifteenth-century Habsburg ruler of Tyrol also known as Sigmund the Rich in Coin, expanded the medieval predecessor in 1462 and 1463. A fire destroyed it in 1490 or 1491, and the disaster was attributed to the negligence of a keeper.
In 1499, the future Emperor Maximilian I transferred the ruins to the brothers Veit-Jakob and Simon Tänzl. In return, they surrendered Berneck Castle in the Kaunertal and undertook to rebuild the fortifications at Stans. The brothers began the reconstruction in 1500, completing it over eight years. They had become wealthy as part owners of the silver mines at Schwaz and were raised to the nobility in 1502. Their rebuilding established the castle’s present late-medieval and early Renaissance character.
Ilsung and Fugger ownership
The Tänzl heirs sold Tratzberg in 1553, beginning a succession of ownership changes and further alterations. During the second half of the sixteenth century, the Augsburg knight Georg Ilsung and his family completed the northern part of the complex and commissioned the painted decoration of the inner courtyard. Ilsung’s children later added Tratzberg to their family name.
Through the marriage of Georg Ilsung’s daughter Anna to Count Jakob III Fugger, the castle passed by inheritance to the Augsburg Fugger family in 1589. The Fuggers were a prominent merchant and banking dynasty whose wealth was closely connected with mining and long-distance commerce, including copper and silver mining near Schwaz. Their ownership is recalled by the Fugger Parlour and Fugger Chamber.
Later owners, decline, and restoration
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Tratzberg belonged successively to the Stauber-Imhof family, the von der Halden family, and the imperial baron Josef Ignaz von Tannenberg. It ceased to be inhabited from the middle of the eighteenth century. Bavarian authorities seized it in 1703 during the War of the Spanish Succession, a European conflict over the Spanish throne, and parts of the castle were then used as a hospital. In 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars, Bavarian soldiers looted the armoury and demolished part of the furnishings.
The Enzenberg family acquired the castle by inheritance in 1847, when extensive restoration was needed to make it habitable again. The work was complete by 1879. Count Ulrich Goëss-Enzenberg and Katrin Goëss-Enzenberg have lived there since 1991, and restoration carried out from 1991 to 1994, together with the opening of the castle to visitors, belongs to their period of ownership. Tratzberg is now used as a museum, with publicly accessible rooms retaining substantial historical furnishings and fittings from the transition between the Gothic and Renaissance periods, as well as from the Fugger period.
Remains
Tratzberg occupies a rocky ridge on the north side of the Inn Valley, about 100 metres above the valley floor and at an elevation of approximately 629 metres. The principal building is a three-storey complex of four wings arranged around an inner courtyard. Ashlar masonry, made from regularly dressed stone blocks laid in orderly courses, forms the main construction. Hagau marble appears in the stair tower, portals, arcades, columns, window sills, and fireplaces.
Courtyard and chapel
Painted inner courtyard
The inner courtyard is surrounded by conspicuous painted facade decoration from the second half of the sixteenth century. The northern wing, left unfinished during the Tänzl building campaign, was completed later under Georg Ilsung. The courtyard decoration belongs to the Ilsung period and forms part of the castle’s late Renaissance appearance.
Chapel
A chapel with a bell tower occupies the north-eastern corner of the courtyard complex. Its late Gothic net vault, a ceiling formed by intersecting ribs in a net-like pattern, belongs to the chapel’s medieval architectural character. Sculptures and painted panels date partly from the Tänzl period. The high altar, made in 1750, depicts the beheading of Catherine of Alexandria, the Christian saint identified as Tratzberg’s patron saint.
Painted rooms and historical furnishings
Habsburg Hall
The Habsburg Hall contains a wall-encompassing painted genealogy of the Habsburg dynasty. It presents the German King and later Emperor Maximilian I with his wives Mary of Burgundy and Bianca Maria Sforza, together with King Rudolf I, Duke Rudolf IV, and the Tyrolean rulers Frederick IV, known as “with the Empty Purse,” and Sigmund the Rich in Coin. Maximilian I was a major patron of architecture, dynastic imagery, and court culture in the Alpine region.
Fugger Parlour and Fugger Chamber
The Fugger Parlour and Fugger Chamber retain historical furniture and fittings. Among them are a late Gothic South Tyrolean cupboard from about 1460, decorated with carved vine-leaf reliefs and formerly from Reifenstein Castle of the Teutonic Order, a medieval religious and military order. The rooms also contain a Gothic washstand with an upper structure, a Gothic cheek table with a scissor chair, and a Gothic post bed.
Two inlaid trestle tables from about 1520 have twisted column-like legs. Other furnishings include a large chest with panelled doors and a late Gothic chandelier shaped like a mermaid. A painting by Hans Leonhard Schäufelein from 1509 depicts a tournament at the Innsbruck Hofburg. One green-glazed tiled stove has relief decoration and a Crucifixion group, while another, made around 1620 by a Nuremberg workshop associated with Georg Fest, is decorated with representations of the five senses and stands in the Queen’s Room.
Women’s Parlour
The Women’s Parlour contains seventeenth-century domestic furnishings, including a Renaissance box bed, cradle, high chair, women’s washstand, spinning wheel, and laundry press. Three globes from the eighteenth century stand on a two-storey Renaissance facade cabinet.
Hunting Room
The nineteenth-century Hunting Room served as a dining room during the Enzenberg period. Carved life-size figures of red deer, a fox, and bears occupy the room. At its centre, a sculptural group shows Count Franz Enzenberg III hunting with the future Emperor Franz Joseph, with whom he hunted in 1848.
Armoury and other features
Armoury
The armoury contains armour and weapons from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Repeated plundering left little of its earlier collection, and most of the present holdings were assembled by Count Franz Enzenberg III.
Additional surviving features
Other identified features include an early sixteenth-century chalk inscription, a sleeping chamber associated with Maximilian I, and another Renaissance box bed. Together with the preserved rooms, painted decoration, architectural stonework, and furnishings, these elements express the successive medieval, Renaissance, Fugger, and Enzenberg phases of the castle.
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