Schwaighof

The Schwaighof stands in the Spratzern district of St Pölten, at the southern end of Josefstraße on Landsbergerstraße 11. Built in the 12th century on the Steinfeld, a stretch of land between St Pölten and Spratzern, it began as an estate farm for the Augustinian canons. After destruction during the 1683 Turkish siege of Vienna, the property passed to the canons in 1692. They commissioned a Baroque rebuild, with architects Jakob Prandtauer and Christian Alexander Oedtl likely involved. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, it became a hotel before being converted into a seminar centre in 2007–2008 by architects Roman Mramor and Rolf Neustädter. The main building shows two parallel single-storey wings with bold plaster framing and stone trim under sweeping hip roofs. A central gateway links them, its pillars topped by four casts of Baroque grotesque figures from 1695–1700: a milkmaid, reaper, shearer and shepherd. The originals are kept in the courtyard of St Pölten’s city museum. Lower pillars carry statues of farm animals. To the south is a three-aisled service hall with ribbed vaulting supported by four columns. To the north stands the former residence of Provost Christoph Müller von Prankenheim, its ceilings adorned with stucco and framed frescoes from around 1700. Visitors walk through the gateway into a courtyard framed by the two wings. The service hall’s vaulted interior and the residence’s rich stucco and frescoes remain intact. Outside, the low stone figures of cattle and sheep add a rural touch. The whole complex sits quietly on the edge of Spratzern, its Baroque lines softened by centuries of use as both home and meeting place.