Brandhof

The Brandhof is a historic farmstead at the foot of the Seebergsattel pass on the Mariazeller Straße in Mariazell, Styria. It sits under Denkmalschutz and was once a single farm on the border between the estates of Mariazell and Aflenz. By 1390 the tenant Prantner gave his name to the place. In 1818 Erzherzog Johann bought the farm at auction through a proxy and set out to create a model alpine livestock estate. He enlarged the estate, built a new chapel and turned the modest house into a hunting lodge. The lodge’s long rectangular building has a steep roof to shed heavy snow and a neogothic clock-tower above its centre. Inside, the chapel holds a late-medieval Madonna now dressed in Baroque paint. Schnorr von Carolsfeld designed stained-glass windows that show the archduke’s estates and life events. Daniel Böhm carved Habsburg coats of arms into the ceiling beams. The ‘Jägerzimmer’ is lined with Tyrolean stone pine and once housed a private hunting museum. Visitors walk past the working farm buildings to the main house. The chapel’s Madonna and the neogothic furnishings remain as Erzherzog Johann arranged them. The large dining hall still shows its painted glass windows. The surrounding meadows and woods recall the archduke’s hunting grounds in the Hochschwab massif.