Schloss Kühbach

Schloss Kühbach is a two-storeyed classical-style building arranged in three wings, open to the south. It stands in the centre of the market town of Kühbach in the Aichach-Friedberg district, part of the historic Wittelsbacher region. The present structure dates from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Before that, the site belonged to a Benedictine convent founded in 1011 and dedicated to Saint Magnus. The nuns’ former convent buildings were gradually enlarged, reaching their greatest extent in the late Middle Ages. The convent held extensive lands: about seventy farms, seven ploughlands, four fiefs, eighty-five smallholdings and five mills. After the Thirty Years’ War the buildings were rebuilt in stages and altered repeatedly. In 1803 the state took over the estate during the secularisation of church property. The south wing was destroyed by fire in 1820 and replaced by a wall with wrought-iron grilles. In 1839 Duke Max in Bavaria bought the complex and used it as a hunting lodge, adding a new park and a grand hall. The west wing still contains the gate tower built in 1696 by the master builder Giovanni Androi. A small pleasure pavilion from 1690, the oldest surviving house in Kühbach, stands in the former convent garden. It has three cross-vaulted cellars and an upstairs room richly decorated with stucco. The nuns’ rib-vaulted cloister, begun in 1684 under Abbess Maria Helena von Lerchenfeld, was reopened in the 1990s after restoration. The site is privately owned and not open to the public.