Schloss Thürnthal

Schloss Thürnthal stands on the edge of the Wagram ridge in Lower Austria, a four-storey building whose architecture mixes high Baroque forms with classical elements. A dry moat still rings the house, and the entrance hall opens into a courtyard whose rounded corners give it the feel of a small Roman forum. The chapel opposite is lined with marble and holds a copy of Franz Anton Maulbertsch’s ‘Annunciation’, the original now in Vienna’s Barockmuseum. The building’s history begins with a 16th-century water castle that burned in 1696. Adrian Wenzel Graf Enckevoirt bought the ruins in 1698 and commissioned Domenico Martinelli to lay out the four-wing plan. Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach later took charge, and the ceilings were stamped with Santino Bussi’s mythological stucco. The grand staircase was meant to be marble, but only the risers remain, showing the scale of the unfinished vision. Visitors enter through a three-aisled foyer and walk past the chapel into the courtyard. The main floor’s Mezzanine once housed the owner’s apartments, above which lie the Bel Etage’s richly modelled rooms. The attic storey was reserved for guests, while the cellars still hold fragments of the Renaissance predecessor. Outside, a fourfold lime avenue leads east to a stone basin that once held a fountain, and the remains of the English-style park stretch south towards the ridge.