Ansitz Albersheim

Ansitz Albersheim stands in Innsbruck, a city in the Austrian province of Tirol. It occupies a quiet corner along the Innrain, once part of a larger orchard that has long since disappeared beneath modern streets. The building itself is a compact cube, its walls supported by sturdy buttresses and its corners marked by two pale ochre turrets from the 16th century. Two broad string courses run around the exterior, dividing the façade into clear horizontal bands. The north front still shows the restrained elegance of a Tyrolean noble residence, with a simple doorway above which a mosaic of the Mariahilf image looks down. The house began as a home for Matthias Alber, a chancellor raised to the nobility by Emperor Ferdinand I in 1561. Later owners included the court musician Wilhelm Brunereaw and the merchant Josef Rimmel, before the building passed through many hands in the 19th century. In 1938 the state of Tirol converted it into an old people’s home run by the Nothburga Foundation, which still bears the name today. A 1979 renovation, aided by Belgian volunteers, restored the structure and allowed part of it to be used for art exhibitions. Inside, a long vaulted corridor runs the full depth of the ground floor, its ceiling ribs forming small domed panels. A single curved staircase winds upward from the rear, leading to the first floor where a former chapel now serves other purposes. The upper storey once housed the ‘Galerie Ynnsprugger Werkstatt’, later renamed ‘Galerie Nothburga’ under Elfriede Gerber’s direction. Today the building mixes residential rooms with gallery spaces, quietly preserving the memory of its noble and civic past.