Löwenapotheke (Steyr)

The Löwenapotheke stands in Steyr’s Enge Gasse, a fourteenth-century building whose three street façades still show their eighteenth-century baroque stucco after fires in 1727 and 1824. The northern side towards Zwischenbrücken projects a small oriel window framed by elaborate plasterwork. A gilded wrought-iron sign depicts a lion rising from flames, marking the pharmacy’s name. In the lunette beneath the oriel a carved inscription recalls the armistice signed here on Christmas Day 1800 that ended hostilities between Austria and France and led to the Treaty of Lunéville the following February. A mistaken date, 7 February, appears on the plaque. The building gained wider importance because of that diplomatic event, yet its earlier owners were bakers and merchant families such as Spizl and Metzger who controlled the house from the late sixteenth century through most of the eighteenth. Only in 1784 did Johann Baptist Göppl, a gardener by trade, open the first pharmacy on the site. The Göppl family ran the business until 1915, after which the Schaden family took ownership in 1919 and still hold it today. Visitors find a row of three façades dressed in swirling baroque stucco and a projecting oriel on the northern side. The gilded iron lion sign hangs above the entrance, and inside the pharmacy retains its historic fittings. The carved lintel beneath the oriel carries the armistice inscription, its incorrect date a small puzzle for passers-by. The narrow Enge Gasse leads straight to the Enns riverbank, linking the old pharmacy to Steyr’s riverside walks.