Schloss Sankt Jakob am Thurn

Schloss Sankt Jakob am Thurn stands in Puch bei Hallein, a village in the Salzburg district of Hallein. The building is a medieval tower built of rough-hewn stone, six storeys high, with walls nearly two metres thick at ground level. A slate roof now covers what was once shingled, and a weather vane crowns the pyramid shape. Beside the tower a three-storey annexe was added in the late Middle Ages, its pitched roof and stone doorways still showing late Gothic window frames. The main entrance to the tower is a round-arched stone portal with Baroque detailing, and beneath a small shelter hangs a 16th-century wall crucifix. The tower belonged to the Thurn family, Salzburg’s hereditary burgraves who also collected bridge tolls in the city. In 1647 the estate passed to Johann von Plaz, a nobleman who had helped suppress the Zillertal uprising two years earlier. The Plaz family were raised to the comital rank in 1696 and remain the only surviving Salzburg aristocratic house. After changing hands several times in the 20th century, the property is now owned by Martin Stuart and Ulrike Flatz. Visitors can walk around the exterior to admire the massive stonework, the late Gothic windows, and the Baroque entrance. The annexe’s vaulted rooms still show simple Baroque ceiling stucco, and the tower’s interior has been restored after two 17th-century fires. Though the building remains in private hands, its medieval silhouette and historic details make it a quiet witness to centuries of Salzburg nobility and power.