Schloss Aichet

Schloss Aichet stands in Steyr, a town in Upper Austria, on the Sierninger Straße. Its name recalls the oaks that once grew in this part of the city. The present building, a Renaissance structure, replaced an earlier medieval house and has been protected as a listed monument since the 20th century. The house was first recorded in the 13th century. Michael Aidn, who served as Steyr’s mayor between 1595 and 1597, commissioned the current building in the late 16th century. After changing hands several times, the castle was gutted by fire in 1713 and rebuilt in 1748, leaving only one of its four corner towers standing. In 1782 it belonged to the Risenfels family, and later owners included the Köstler and Pampel families. Until 1987 it housed the folk-art collection of Marianne Kautsch, cared for by the folklorist Renate Pampel. The two-and-a-half-storey building has a broad hipped roof with a small hip at one end. On the east corner, above the first floor, a rounded bay projects with its own conical roof. Plain façades are enlivened only by horizontal plaster bands on the ground floor.