Ansitz Unterhalden

The Ansitz Unterhalden stands in the village of Bludesch in the Walgau valley of Vorarlberg. A two-storey rectangular building under Denkmalschutz, it was raised in about 1640 and later passed through the hands of Weingarten Abbey, Friedrich Wilhelm of Orange-Nassau, and the Austrian state. By the late 19th century it had become an inn, but by 1983 it stood empty once more. Inside, the cellar is covered by a barrel vault, while the upper floors have corridors with low barrel vaults and simple stucco work. The south-west corner room on the first floor was once a grand reception hall, its flat stucco ceiling from the early 1600s divided into wide panels with a central rosette and winged angel heads. A raised semi-circular niche in the north wall shows heavy Renaissance framing of the same date, its base patterned with diamond and rectangular panels and crowned by an entablature with rolled ornament and a ball motif above an empty inscribed panel. The building’s southern façade faces the street with a symmetrical arrangement of sandstone-framed windows and a two-flight stone staircase leading to the main entrance. To the rear a single-storey service wing extends northwards, completing the compact rectangular plan.