Schloss Bruck – Lienz Town Museum

Phone:                       +43 4852 62580-83
Fax:                           +43 4852 62580-4
E-mail:                       Museum Schloss Bruck   

Opening hours 18 May - 27 October 2013:

For more details please visit the website of Museum Schloss Bruck

On a knoll commanding the western approach to Lienz stands the majestic Schloss Bruck, the one-time residence of the Counts of Gorizia. Built at the beginning of the 13th century, this medieval castle looks out over the entire Lienz basin and the Isel valley. It is hard to imagine a strategically better location for a castle.
 
Orginally conceived as a place of refuge and defence, it was altered and extended on several occasions to become an official administrative seat in which the Counts of Gorizia and subsequently the Barons of Wolkenstein-Rodenegg resided. An arched two-light window with a  bud capital in the keep and the painted wooden ceiling in the Rittersaal date back to the Romanesque period. The oldest parts of the castle, the keep, the residential wing on the south side and the halls on the north side are all protected by a curtain wall.
 
The two-storey Schlosskapelle is well worth seeing, a chapel erected towards the end of the 13th century and furbished with a rib vault and a polygonal bay window in the middle of the 15th century. The frescoes are by Nikolaus Kentner (1452) and Simon von Taisten (1490/96), a pupil of Friedrich Pacher. They depict the 14 auxiliary saints and a Madonna of Mercy as well as the last Count and Countess of Gorizia, Leonhard and Paola, with the combined coats of arms of Gorizia and Gonzaga.

The castle has been in the town’s possession since 1943 and houses the municipal museum and the Albin Egger-Lienz gallery. In the grounds there is a café with a terrace and a souvenir shop. The 40 exhibition rooms contain a wealth of cultural heritage pertaining to the landscape, the history and the art of East Tyrol. The museum is open from the middle of May until the end of October. For the Tyrolean provincial exhibition in 2000 the castle underwent  a large-scale renovation and is now a magnificent historical landmark.
 
Set in its own park with its idyllic pond, Schloss Bruck is the ideal destination for a day excursion.