Palais Trauttmansdorff, Graz

The Palais Trauttmansdorff stands in Graz’s old town, where three streets meet in the Innere Stadt district. Built from two houses in the 16th and 17th centuries, it became the largest city palace when Count Alois Trauttmansdorff added the neighbouring Herberstein palace. The late-Renaissance façade was remodelled in the Baroque style around 1720, and after wartime damage in 1944 only the stone portal and a Madonna statue survived.

Graf Maximilian Trauttmansdorff commissioned the Madonna that once stood in a niche on the façade. The building suffered further neglect after 1983 until a renovation in 1989 gave it new purpose. Today the three-storey structure houses offices, shops, the Graz Art Association and classrooms used by Urania Steiermark until recently.

Visitors enter through a rusticated round-arched stone portal into a complex of several internal courtyards. The southern wing, rebuilt in 1991–92, opens onto a modern courtyard while the older Burggasse wing preserves parts of the original layout. Decorative bandwork on the façade and the historic portal remain the clearest traces of the palace’s past grandeur.