Adeliges Damenstift, Innsbruck

The Adeliges Damenstift Innsbruck is a secular noble convent in the city centre of Innsbruck. It occupies a four-storey building that once formed the southern edge of the Hofburg complex. The structure began as the ‘Harnaschhaus’, first recorded in 1465, and was repeatedly enlarged before being adapted in the 18th century for its new purpose. Its foundation followed the sudden death of Emperor Franz I Stephan in 1765. Maria Theresia established the Stift that same year to honour his memory, limiting membership to twelve noble ladies who had to prove sixteen generations of ancestry. Each day they attended two masses and recited the office at the hour of his death. The only abbess was Maria Theresia’s daughter, Erzherzogin Maria Elisabeth, known as ‘kropferte Liesl’, who led a sociable life in the city until fleeing the French in 1805. Visitors enter through a baroque portal crowned by the Tyrolean eagle and pass into a courtyard decorated with late-renaissance frescoes. The ground floor houses the Stiftskeller restaurant, where fragments of 16th-century wall painting survive. The chapel occupies the former death chamber of the emperor, and the building still shelters the oval badge of the Stift on its white-and-blue ribbon.