Hofburg (Palazzo Vescovile di Bressanone)

A prince's court in everything but name: from the 1200s this palace housed the bishops who ruled a principality, and its arcaded courtyard, Habsburg portrait figures, frescoed Imperial Wing and court church now hold the diocese's museums after the bishops moved to Bolzano in 1973.

Why it matters

The name says it plainly: Hofburg, the court castle, the seat from which bishops of Bressanone exercised spiritual and secular power until secularisation ended princely rule in 1803. First documented as an episcopal residence from the mid-13th century, the palace was transformed from 1595 under Prince-Bishop Cardinal Andreas von Austria, whose court architect Albrecht Lucchese conceived a four-winged complex over three floors around an arcaded courtyard. The building reached its present Renaissance-and-Baroque form in 1711, and its collections span 6,600 square metres. The palace entered its third life as a museum home after 1973, the year the bishops' see transferred to Bolzano.

What to notice

Lucchese's plan called for 44 terracotta sculptures in the first-floor niches depicting the family tree of the Habsburgs; 24 figures remain in the arcade pillars and eight more in the south wing passageway, a cycle created at the transition from Renaissance to early Baroque. The marble fountain added in November 2016, designed by Franz Kehrer in white stone from Ratschings, is the courtyard's newest layer. Inside, the Court Council chamber of 1606 survives in original condition, with pinewood panelling, coat-of-arms paintings and majolica stoves. The Imperial Wing, built in the early 18th century under Prince-Bishop Kaspar Ignaz Count Kuenigl, is considered the artistic high point of the interior after the court church: large ceiling frescoes, fine stuccowork, Venetian silk wallpaper and valuable majolica stoves. The two-storey Baroque court church carries side-wall frescoes painted in 1708 by Kaspar Waldmann of Innsbruck with scenes from the life of the Virgin, rich stucco and a marble high altar.

Context and history

The palace's architecture tracks the self-image of its rulers. Medieval in origin as the bishops' residence beside the cathedral, it took its grand Renaissance shape in 1595, when Cardinal Andreas von Austria commissioned Lucchese, court architect of Innsbruck, and the Habsburg programme in the courtyard advertised loyalty to the imperial house. The 18th century added the Kuenigl state rooms and the Waldmann frescoes, completing the palace’s Renaissance-and-Baroque form. Secularisation in 1803 stripped the bishops of their principality; they remained in the palace as bishops of the diocese until 1973, when the see's move to Bolzano freed the building for the Diocesan Museum, the Nativity Scene Museum and the Diocesan Archive. The Hofgarten, the Lords' Garden with its Biedermeier-period bronze fountain, extends the palace toward the mountains on the north side of the district.