Schloss Herrnau

Schloss Herrnau stands south of Salzburg city beside the Hellbrunner Allee. The name comes from the meadow of the noble lords who once owned the land along the Salzach. In 1574 it first appears as ‘die Herrnau’, and in 1631 the former court servant Philip Vermeulen built a manor there known as the Herrenhof Herrnau. The present building dates from 1741–44 when Hieronymus Nikolaus Anton Christani von Rall, the court chancellor, remodelled it in its current form. Christani di Rallo directed the expulsion of Salzburg’s Protestants in 1731–32 and his marble coat of arms still sits above the entrance. Later owners included the counts Kuenburg, the grand duke of Tuscany and finally the Clary-Aldringen family. The three-storey country house is topped by a tall hipped roof and a southern staircase tower. A park surrounds the building and the former Eschenbach stream, now dry, once flowed from Hellbrunn’s gardens to the east portal. Though private, the Schloss remains a quiet witness to Salzburg’s aristocratic past.