Schloss Guggenthal

Schloss Guggenthal is a small stately home in the village of Guggenthal, part of the Koppl municipality near Salzburg. It stands at the foot of the Gaisberg mountain beside the Wolfgangseestraße road, about five kilometres east of Salzburg city centre. First mentioned in property records in 1588, the building has belonged to bishops’ and archbishops’ families from Chiemsee and Salzburg for centuries. It remains in private hands today but has been empty for some time and is now in poor condition. The site is protected as a historic monument.

The estate’s history reaches back further than the house itself. A hamlet called Gukkental appears in records from 1272. In 1588 Andre and Maximilian Stainhauser owned the property before financial collapse forced a sale in 1627 to Sebastian Stainperger, a Salzburg merchant. After his death his widow sold it in 1633 to Catharina Gräfin Lodron. Archbishop Paris Lodron later acquired the estate for the Lodron family in 1642 and gave it to Bishop Johann Christoph of Chiemsee with conditions about another property in Morzg. Changing owners brought disputes with local farmers and legal battles over jurisdiction that lasted until 1691.

The building has a nearly square footprint with two storeys under a tall, nearly pyramid-shaped hipped roof. A central passage runs through the house, reached by a steep wooden staircase to the upper floor. Above the eastern door once hung the coat of arms of Bishop Franz Virgil Graf Spaur, stolen in 2018, while the western side bore the Lodron family crest with a lion and pretzel-shaped tail, taken in 2014. On the street side a wooden crucifix stands behind iron bars, and on the mountain side a Madonna figure looks out. Despite its protected status, the house is unused and slowly falling into ruin.