Emslieb Castle

Emslieb Castle is located in Salzburg at Hellbrunner Allee No. 65. During the interwar period, the castle was also known as Villa Strongfort.Jakob Hannibal von Hohenems, the archbishop’s nephew and high-princely court marshal, erected it “in the Italian way” in 1618 as a scaled-down version of the Palazzo Gallio in Gravedona.The top grotto of the Hellbrunn trick fountains is a scaled-down replica of Emslieb Castle. Above the entrance is the coat of arms of Hohenems, and above the central balcony is the coat of arms of Archbishop Markus Sittikus.

After his patron and uncle Markus Sittikus died in 1619, his nephew Jakob Hannibal, who was not well liked in Salzburg due to his excess, was forced to leave the region.In 1620, Prince-Archbishop Paris von Lodron took over the palace and granted it to Archbishop Thomas Perger, who was subsequently given the right to use the name Perger von Emslieb.The castle was owned by the Perger family until 1710, then by the Freiherren von Grimming from 1713 to 1778, then by the Bishop of Chiemsee, and finally by Ernestine Princess Esterházy from 1797 to 1811.Following 1811, there were multiple generally quick transfers of ownership.Thaddaeus Ropac, the proprietor of the gallery, presently owns it.

The castle’s original character, with the rectangular core block with its hipped roof and the slightly jutting prominent towers with their pyramid roofs, has been lost due to many major changes. The garden of the ancient castle was originally split into lovely beds and spanned by a canal where rare ducks were maintained, comparable to Hellbrunn.The center circular stone-clad decorative pond of the castle (formerly supplied with whitefish and char, now significant as an amphibian habitat) was always a feature of the ancient gardens.In the direction of the Salzachau Forest, a palace axis runs parallel to the Fürstenweg.The castle axis, which typifies the terrain, may still be seen today via a gapped avenue of fruit trees.