Schloss Kirchstetten

Schloss Kirchstetten stands in the village of Kirchstetten in Lower Austria’s Weinviertel region. The building’s powerful 16th-century core once formed a four-winged structure surrounded by a moat and defensive walls. In 1723 the imperial physician Matthias von Suttner bought the castle and commissioned Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach to redesign it in the Baroque style. The result is a U-shaped complex open to the east, where an extensive park stretches out. The moat and walls have long since vanished, leaving only the elegant layout and the park. The castle’s greatest treasure is the Fest-Maulbertsch-Saal, named after Franz Anton Maulbertsch who painted its ceiling between 1750 and 1752. His masterpiece, The Triumph of Truth over Time, covers the entire ceiling in oil. On the end walls hang four large portraits of the Suttner family by the Rococo painter Franz Anton Palko. The Suttner family left the castle after 1945, and decades of neglect followed until a 1975 burglary stripped the chapel of its altar painting by Kremser Schmidt and other artworks. Today the castle hosts an annual summer festival of opera and classical music. Performances take place in the Maulbertsch-Saal, billed as Austria’s smallest opera house, where rare Belcanto works are revived. Orchestral open-air concerts ring the courtyard while chamber music cycles fill the autumn schedule. During the festival visitors can tour the restored interiors, and each December the Advent weekend brings a seasonal market to the grounds.