Palais Fugger taxis

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Street facade of the Palais Fugger-Taxis (right); left in the picture: the old country house

The Palais Fugger-Taxis , also called Palais Taxis or Taxispalais , is a baroque city ​​palace in Innsbruck's Maria-Theresien-Straße 45. It was built and came from 1679 by Hans Otto Fugger von Kirchberg-Weißenhorn according to plans by Johann Martin Gumpp the Elder At the beginning of the 18th century by marriage to the von Welsberg family. The latter sold the building in 1784 to the postmaster general Joseph Sebastian von Thurn und Taxis , who used it not only as a residence but also as a post office .

The palace has been owned by the State of Tyrol since 1905 . Today it houses state administration offices and an art gallery. With the exception of their premises, an inside tour of the palace , which has been a listed building since September 20, 2006, is not possible.

history

Portrait engraving by Hans Otto Fugger by an unknown artist

A major fire in 1620 destroyed an entire row of houses at the site of today's palace and left two ruins there. The two parcels belonging to it belonged to the Tyrolean Landsmannschaft in 1679, who sold the land on July 14th of that year to Count Hans Otto Fugger von Kirchberg-Weißenhorn. Shortly after the acquisition, the new owner had the construction of a city palace there based on the plans of Innsbruck's court architect Johann Martin Gumpp the Elder, building the first baroque palace in the city based on the models of Italian palazzi. A three-wing building was created that surrounded an inner courtyard and to the east of it had a geometrically designed garden. The master mason was Georg Span, who completed the shell of the building in the course of 1680. Nine years later, the palace was damaged in an earthquake, but restored in October and November of the following year. Hans Otto's son and heir Bonaventura preferred Augsburg as a place of residence, and so he rented the unused Innsbruck city palace to Count Nikolaus Lodron on November 14, 1690 .

In 1692 Bonaventura signed the building over to replace an outstanding cash payment of 28,000  guilders to the Venice- based heirs of Pietro Martyre Cernez, but retained the right to repurchase it from his family. Marquard Eustachius Fugger made use of this in 1701 and bought the palace back on May 11th. However, the house did not remain in the possession of the Fuggers for long, because Marquard's daughter Maria Theresia Violante brought it in 1702 as a dowry to her marriage to Count Guidobald von Welsberg. The von Welsberg resided at their ancestral castle in the Puster Valley and did not live in the palace themselves, but rented most of the premises, including the house chapel with a portable altar with relics consecrated by the Brixen prince-bishop Kaspar Ignaz von Künigl . They reserved only a few rooms for a possible stay in Innsbruck. The tenants included the von Brandis , von Thurn und Taxis and Gondolo families .

Illustration of the palace and the old country house from the 19th century

Philipp von Welsberg sold the palace to Joseph Sebastian von Thurn und Taxis in 1784. His family had been postmaster in Innsbruck since the 16th century and used the newly purchased building not only as a residence, but also as a post office. Her previously inhabited house No. 37 on Maria-Theresien-Straße had become dilapidated and no longer met the requirements. Joseph Sebastian had the palace partially redesigned in order to adapt it to the new mixed use. In the inner courtyard he had fixtures made for the postal service and the ballroom was raised on the upper floor. He then commissioned the internationally renowned painter Martin Knoller for 5,300 guilders to design the space that had been gained. Up until then, portraits of Welsberg family members hung on the walls of the room .

In 1905 the building was sold to the State of Tyrol, which continued the postal service there until 1908. Then the postal service moved into a new building on Maximilianstrasse. The palace was rebuilt in 1911 under the direction of the architect Hans Menardi and annexed to the neighboring country house by adding a connection to it. The ground floor was to be used in the future for a permanent trade exhibition and received a corresponding redesign. In addition to the relocation of the large staircase, this also included the demolition of the wooden galleries in the inner courtyard of the palace and their replacement by brick corridors with arched windows . At the same time, the courtyard facades were given a similar design to the outer facade. When the New Country House was built east of the building at the end of the 1930s , a small part of the southern side wing of the palace had to be laid down.

Today the Palais Fugger-Taxis houses offices of the state administration and the Taxispalais - Kunsthalle Tirol (formerly Galerie im Taxispalais), the official art hall of the state of Tyrol for contemporary art . When it was founded in 1964, the art gallery only occupied 75 m² of exhibition space. This was expanded to 500 m² in 1998/99 according to plans by Hanno Schlögl by converting and expanding the ground floor and basement, including the courtyard area. Symposia, discussions and lectures accompany the changing exhibition program.

description

Street facade of the palace, drawing by Johann Martin Gumpp the Elder, 1679

The palace has a three-storey central wing with nine axes, which are joined at right angles by two narrower, eleven-axis side wings. The horseshoe shape formed in this way encloses a rectangular inner courtyard, which used to be joined by a baroque garden in the east . The new country house now stands on the former garden area. The outer facade of the central wing facing Maria-Theresien-Strasse has a rusticated ground floor with the portal in the central axis . Two Tuscan columns are presented to him, on which lying lion sculptures serve as consoles for an overlying balcony with wickerwork. Strong cornices visually separate the individual floors from each other, whereby the first floor is easily recognizable as a former bel étage through its large, high windows . The frames of these windows are profiled several times and have lush crowning made of stucco , consisting of an oval arched central shield, which is surrounded by foliage. The three central axes of the facade are particularly emphasized by arched windows on the first floor and by oval windows on the mezzanine floor. Originally, these openings had the same shape as the other windows and were probably only changed when the ballroom behind them was raised in 1785. The substantially lower second floor is by a powerful cornice with richly sculpted triglyphs - and metopes - Fries completed.

Through the portal, the visitor enters a three-aisled vestibule , the vaulted ceiling of which is supported by Corinthian columns. From there, a wide staircase to the upper floors was previously accessible. On the first floor, in the central axis of the building, there is the ballroom of the house, called the Paris Hall . Its name results from a classicist ceiling fresco by Martin Knollers with an antique theme. Created in the winter of 1785/86, it shows the judgment of Paris . The room takes up the height of both upper floors and is closed off by a mirror vault . On the walls are wall paintings in the Rococo style , which date from around 1750. Painted over at the time of the Empire, they were exposed again during a renovation of the hall in 1921. They show painted pilasters with Rocaille - capitals . In between there are vase representations and flower tendrils in rocailles frames. From the same period as the wall decoration, there are two brick chimneys on the long walls of the hall, which are clad with black and white stucco marble. A cornice with a classicist frieze above it, by Martin Knoller and Franz Altmutter , runs above the wall paintings . The portraits of the former owner Joseph Sebastian von Thurn und Taxis and his wife Maria Josepha von Wilczek can be found in the central lunettes of the mirror vault above . Stuccoed cartouches in the corners of the room show the coats of arms of the two married couples and their mothers from the von Springenstein and von Oettingen families . The Paris Hall owes its current appearance to a restoration in 1953.

The vestibule and the ballroom are the only two rooms in the palace that have not been modernized. The mirror room adjacent to the ballroom is no longer preserved. This room once had an early Empire style facility . This included a white wooden lambris with gold strips and rosettes as well as gold-framed mirrors, the top of which showed portrait medallions.

literature

  • Gert Ammann (edit.): Tirol (= Dehio-Handbuch . Die Kunstdenkmäler Österreichs. Volume 7). Schroll, Vienna [a. a.] 1980, ISBN 3-7031-0488-0 , pp. 58-59.
  • Georg Clam Martinic : Austrian Castle Lexicon. Palaces, castles and ruins. A & M, Salzburg 2007, ISBN 3-902397-50-0 , p. 393.
  • Johanna Felmayer (arr.): The profane art monuments of the city of Innsbruck. Volume 1: Old Town - City Expansion by the Middle of the 19th Century (= Austrian Art Topography . Volume 38). Schroll, Vienna 1972, ISBN 3-7031-0258-6 , p. 380 ff.
  • Heinrich Hammer : The former Palais Fugger (taxis) in Innsbruck. In: Messages of the Association for Homeland Security. Fixed number Heimattag Innsbruck 1923 Tyrolia, Innsbruck 1923 ( digitized ).
  • Heinrich Hammer: The palaces and civil buildings of Innsbruck. Art history guide through the buildings and monuments. Hölzel, Vienna 1923, pp. 129–132 ( digitized version ).
  • Laurin Luchner: Castles in Austria. Second volume. Upper Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Salzburg, Tyrol and Vorarlberg. CH Beck, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-04508-1 , p. 306.

Web links

Commons : Palais Fugger-Taxis  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Protected positions . In: Office of the Tyrolean Provincial Government, Department of Culture (Ed.): Culture reports from Tyrol. 60th Monument Report. Self-published, Innsbruck November 2007, p. 28 ( PDF ; 10.6 MB).
  2. ^ Heinrich Hammer: The former Fugger Palace (taxis) in Innsbruck. 1923, p. 3.
  3. ↑ a b c d Entry about the Palais Fugger-Taxis in Burgen-Austria , accessed on June 2, 2015.
  4. ^ Heinrich Hammer: The former Fugger Palace (taxis) in Innsbruck. 1923, p. 4.
  5. ^ Heinrich Hammer: The former Fugger Palace (taxis) in Innsbruck. 1923, p. 6.
  6. ^ Heinrich Hammer: The former Fugger Palace (taxis) in Innsbruck. 1923, p. 7.
  7. ↑ a b c d Heinrich Hammer: The former Palais Fugger (taxis) in Innsbruck. 1923, p. 8.
  8. ↑ Information on the ceiling painting in the ballroom of the Palais , January 19, 2020.
  9. ↑ Johannes Pöll: Structural remains of the baroque Palais Fugger-Taxis, Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz, Gst. 320, KG Innsbruck. In: Office of the Tyrolean Provincial Government, Department of Culture (Ed.): Culture reports from Tyrol 2012. 63rd Monument Report. Self-published, Innsbruck June 2012, p. 190 ( PDF ; 12 MB).
  10. ↑ Information on renaming , accessed on January 19, 2020.
  11. ↑ Information about the Kunsthalle on their website ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Reconstruction and expansion - ´Galerie im Taxispalais´ . In: architektur im netz , nextroom.at.
  13. ^ Heinrich Hammer: The palaces and civil buildings of Innsbruck. 1923, p. 129.
  14. ↑ Information about the Palais in the Austria Forum , accessed on January 19, 2020.
  15. ^ Heinrich Hammer: The former Fugger Palace (taxis) in Innsbruck. 1923, p. 10.

Coordinates: 47 ° 15 '51.3 "  N , 11 ° 23' 42.2"  E