Schloss Batzenhofen

Schloss Batzenhofen stands on a gentle rise above the Schmutter valley in Schwaben. The two-storey building with its hipped roof was erected around 1750 as a summer residence for the canonesses of St Stephan in Augsburg. Earlier records show the Stift already owned land here since 969, and in 1530 it took full possession after the local nobility died out. The roof and ceiling beams date from 1712, reused when the main structure was completed. After the secularisation of 1803 the property was sold to Bavaria and soon converted into a brewery with an inn that operated until 1920.

The brewery closed and the building passed through several owners. From 1925 to 1928 it housed a children’s home called Sonnenhof, then in 1928 an old people’s home opened with fifty beds. Further modernisations in 1947–48 added forty more rooms, lifts and a nursing station during the following decades. By the 1980s the protected building no longer met contemporary standards, so in 2007 the home moved to a new building in Gersthofen.

In 2013 the former Schloss was bought by local man Sebastian Schaflitzel. All later additions were removed and the historic fabric restored, turning it into a block of private apartments. The symmetrical hipped roof and original beams remain clearly visible from outside, while inside the refurbished spaces now contain modern living quarters. The gently sloping meadows around the house still follow the lines of the old estate, linking the 18th-century summer house to the landscape it was built to overlook.