Maximilian Watched from the Golden Roof: A Self-Guided Walking Tour of Innsbruck's Old Town

You are standing beside the Triumphal Arch, at the south end of Maria-Theresien-Straße. The roadway still passes under the arch, so stay on the pavement. In front of you, looking north toward the mountains, the street opens into a long promenade. The side of the arch that faces you, toward the Old Town, is the side of mourning. The south face, toward the railway station, is the side of a wedding. Maria Theresa had this arch built in 1765, at what was then the southern exit of the city, for the wedding of her third son, Archduke Leopold, later Emperor Leopold II, to the Spanish princess Maria Ludovica. The medieval suburban gate that once stood at the end of this street was pulled down in the same campaign of improvements, and its blocks of Höttinger breccia, the spotted local stone, were reused in the arch. Constantin Walter directed the work, taking the Arch of Constantine in Rome as a model. You will see the same pale, dotted stone in doorways as you walk into the Old Town. During the wedding celebrations, on 18 August 1765, Emperor Franz Stephan, Leopold’s father and Maria Theresa’s husband, died in Innsbruck. The north side of the arch was recast to commemorate his death; the south side remains a wedding monument. The marble reliefs you can see were commissioned from the sculptor Balthasar Moll in 1774, after earlier, provisional decoration. If you walk around the arch, you can compare the two faces: festivity on the south, mourning on the north. Look through the arch, then turn to face north, up Maria-Theresien-Straße. The peaks ahead are the Nordkette. When you are ready, walk north along the promenade for about 350 metres, and stop beside the tall red column in the middle of the street. That is our next stop, St. Anne’s Column.

You are on Maria-Theresien-Straße, standing beside St. Anne’s Column. Look north: the Nordkette rises over the rooftops, and on a clear day the Golden Roof sits in the line of the street. To the south you can see the Bergisel ski jump. The column commemorates 26 July 1703, St. Anne’s Day, when the last Bavarian troops of the War of the Spanish Succession were driven out of Tyrol. The Tyrolean estates vowed a monument in 1704. It was blessed on 26 July 1706 by Prince-Bishop Kaspar Ignaz Graf Künigl of Brixen. The sculptor was Cristoforo Benedetti, and the shaft is a Corinthian column of red marble. A Madonna stands at the top. Around the base are statues of St. Anne, St. Cassian, St. Vigilius and St. George. This street began as the New Town, outside the medieval wall. The old St. Jörgen Gate, at the north end, once opened into the Altstadt; that line is now the start of Herzog-Friedrich-Straße. Palais Gumpp, the old Landhaus, and Palais Trapp still face the promenade, rebuilt as a granite pedestrian zone in 2009. On the west side of the street, today’s Kaufhaus Tyrol stands on the site of the department store Bauer & Schwarz, founded by Jewish families and expropriated in 1938 after the Anschluss. A memorial stone in the lobby, unveiled on 22 July 2010, marks that history. In the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, on the orders of Gauleiter Franz Hofer, SS units in Innsbruck attacked Jewish residents. Wilhelm Bauer, Richard Graubart and Richard Berger were murdered, and Josef Adler later died of his injuries. If you have a few extra minutes, the Pogromdenkmal of 1997, a menorah memorial on Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz, a short walk east of this street, names the four men. Rejoin the walk afterwards at the north end of Maria-Theresien-Straße. When you are ready, continue north, pass the old city-gate line at the Burggraben, and enter Herzog-Friedrich-Straße. The City Tower stands on the right, against the old town hall, about 290 metres from here. That is our next stop.

You are on Herzog-Friedrich-Straße, in the Old Town, standing in front of the City Tower. The tower is built against the old town hall and rises from the line of houses on the east side of the street. From here you look up a square Gothic shaft, then to a narrower octagon and an onion dome. Innsbruck Tourismus gives the height as 51 metres. The tower was completed in 1450, and the same official pages note that it is a good fifty years older than the Golden Roof, which you will reach in a few minutes. For centuries, guards kept watch from the top, calling the hours and warning the town of fire and other dangers. The lower storeys were once used as a prison; the barred windows on the first floors still show that use. The onion dome was added about a hundred years after the tower was finished. From the street you can already see the platform, with its railing, just below the dome. A climb of more than 133 steps leads to that platform at 31 metres, with views over the medieval streets, the Inn, Bergisel, Patscherkofel and the Nordkette. The entrance is through the old town hall at the foot of the tower. The climb is ticketed and is not step-free. Check the current hours and prices on site if you want to go up; official summer hours run later than in winter. This stop is the street, and you do not need to climb for the walk. The street around you is still the main lane of the Altstadt, with low arcades and a tight frontage of town houses. The Helblinghaus, our next stop, stands almost opposite, on the west side. Look north along the lane and you will already see the gilded oriel at the end of the street. When you are ready, cross Herzog-Friedrich-Straße, only about 50 metres, and stand in front of number 10, the house with the dense stucco facade.

You are standing on Herzog-Friedrich-Straße, in front of the Helblinghaus, at number 10. Among the Gothic town houses of the Old Town, this facade is the one covered in pale stucco: shells, putti, fruit, acanthus leaves, masks and a baroque gable that runs up to the fourth floor. Take a moment to look at the decoration at close range, then step back a little so that you can see the gable against the sky. The putti sit among fruit and shells, and the stucco runs around the windows, so that almost no wall is left plain. The house itself is late medieval, like its neighbours. In the 1720s the stucco was added, and it is attributed to Anton Gigl, a craftsman of the Wessobrunn school who had settled in Innsbruck. Look closely at the oriels, the projecting windows. They belong to the older house; the eighteenth-century decoration was laid over them. The building takes its name from Sebastian Helbling, who was associated with the house in the nineteenth century. There is no interior visit; this stop is the facade, and it is free to see from the street. Herzog-Friedrich-Straße is the main street of the Altstadt. Arcades run along both sides, with shops and passages under the houses, a pattern that has marked this street for centuries. You can walk a few steps under an arcade and come back out onto the same street. Behind you, across the lane, is the City Tower we have just left. If you look north, the Golden Roof is already in view, closing the street. The oriel sits straight ahead, and the copper shingles catch the light even on a grey day. When you are ready, walk north along Herzog-Friedrich-Straße for about 70 metres, and stand in the open square, looking up at the gilded oriel. That is our next stop, the Golden Roof.

You are in the square at the north end of Herzog-Friedrich-Straße, looking up at the Golden Roof. The oriel projects from the south facade of the Neuhof, the older residence of the Tyrolean princes, and its roof is covered with 2,657 fire-gilded copper shingles. Even on a cloudy day the gilding holds the light. Emperor Maximilian I had the balcony built between 1497 and 1500. The master builder was Nikolaus Türing the Elder, who also designed the reliefs. The frescoes are attributed to Jörg Kölderer, Maximilian’s court painter. There are eighteen sandstone reliefs, in a style that moves from late Gothic to early Renaissance. They include Maximilian standing with his two wives. To protect the carvings, they were replaced by copies in 1952; six of the originals, restored, can be seen close up in the museum inside. Maximilian used the oriel as a ceremonial balcony, looking down on festivals and tournaments in the square where you are standing. A plaque on this square records that Jakob Hutter, an Anabaptist preacher, was burned to death here on 25 February 1536 after he refused, under torture, to recant or to betray others. The museum in the building, the Museum Goldenes Dachl, is ticketed and is optional; this stop is the facade. If you go in, you can look out from the oriel over the street you have just walked. Since 2003 the same building has also housed the Permanent Secretariat of the Alpine Convention. If you turn around here, you are looking back down Herzog-Friedrich-Straße, toward St. Anne’s Column and the arch. When you are ready, walk east along Pfarrgasse, about 110 metres, onto Domplatz, and stand west of the cathedral facade. That is our next stop, the Cathedral of St. James.

You are on Domplatz, standing west of the twin-towered west facade of the Cathedral of St. James. The two towers rise with onion domes, and the centre of the facade steps back between them. A church on the market here is already mentioned in a document of 1180. The building in front of you is later. After earthquake damage in the seventeenth century, the church was rebuilt between 1717 and 1724, to plans by Johann Jakob Herkomer, and it reuses older nave walls. It was consecrated on 9 September 1724. In 1964, when the Diocese of Innsbruck was established, Pope Paul VI raised this parish church to a cathedral. The dedication to St. James points to Innsbruck’s place on the pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela. If you go in, the high-baroque ceiling frescoes are by Cosmas Damian Asam and show scenes from the life of St. James; the stucco is by his brother Egid Quirin Asam. On the high altar is Lucas Cranach the Elder’s painting of Maria Hilf, given to the church in 1650 by Archduke Leopold V, and copied widely in the Alps. In the left aisle is the bronze tomb of Archduke Maximilian III, associated with Hubert Gerhard and Caspar Gras and cast by Heinrich Reinhart around 1619. The organ on the west gallery has 57 stops and 3,729 pipes. The Mariahilferglocke, in the south tower, was cast at the Grassmayr foundry in Innsbruck in 1846. This is a working church. Visiting hours are set around services; keep your voice down if you go in, and check the current times at the door. This stop is the facade and the square. Pfarrgasse, behind you, leads back to the Golden Roof. When you are ready, walk east onto Rennweg, about 180 metres, and stand in front of the long facade of the Hofburg. That is our next stop, the Imperial Palace.

You are on Rennweg, standing in front of the main facade of the Hofburg, the former imperial palace. The front stretches along this street, with rounded corner pavilions at either end. The open ground in front of the palace is the old Rennplatz, which served Maximilian as a place for tournaments and other contests. The palace grew out of the town’s eastern walls and towers. Under Duke Frederick IV the Habsburg court moved from Merano to Innsbruck. Later princes, including Sigismund and Emperor Maximilian I, extended the complex. Maximilian’s builder, Nikolaus Türing the Elder, who also built the Golden Roof, worked here, and under Maximilian the palace already had roughly the footprint you see today. About two and a half centuries later, Maria Theresa had the residence rebuilt in a Viennese late-baroque style. Work began in the 1750s, was interrupted by the Seven Years’ War, and was finished in the 1770s. Franz Anton Maulbertsch painted the ceiling of the Giant Hall, the main banquet room, which also holds full-length portraits of Maria Theresa, Franz Stephan and their children. In 1765 Maria Theresa held the wedding of her son Leopold and Maria Ludovica here in Innsbruck. On 18 August 1765, during the celebrations, Emperor Franz Stephan died. He was laid out in the Giant Hall and later taken to Vienna. Maria Theresa had the room in which he died made into a chapel, and she founded the Noblewomen’s Collegiate Foundation nearby, so that prayers would be said for him. The north side of the Triumphal Arch, where we began, was recast in mourning at the same time. The state rooms are ticketed and optional; this stop is the facade on Rennweg. If you go in, rejoin the walk afterwards. When you are ready, cross south to Universitätsstraße, about 130 metres, and stand in front of the Court Church. That is our next stop.

You are on Universitätsstraße, standing in front of the Court Church, across from the Hofburg. The church and the adjoining monastery were built between 1553 and 1563 under Emperor Ferdinand I, Maximilian’s grandson, and dedicated to the Holy Cross. They were planned as a setting for Maximilian’s tomb. The cenotaph in its present form was finished in 1584, under Archduke Ferdinand II. If you go in, you will see twenty-eight over-life-size bronze statues standing around an empty tomb. They represent relatives, ancestors and models of the emperor, and eight of them are women. Maximilian himself is shown kneeling. He is buried in the castle of Wiener Neustadt, not in this church. Artists who worked on the monument include Albrecht Dürer, Peter Vischer the Elder and Alexander Colin. The swallow’s nest organ, built by Jörg Ebert between 1555 and 1561, is the largest, almost completely preserved Renaissance organ in Austria. The Silver Chapel, reached from inside the church, holds the tombs of Archduke Ferdinand II and his wife Philippine Welser. Andreas Hofer, who led the 1809 Tyrolean uprising against Napoleonic troops and was executed in Mantua in 1810, has been buried in the church since 1823. The church is entered through the adjoining Museum of Tyrolean Folk Art, and admission is charged. Check the current hours at the door; on Sundays the church usually opens later. This stop is the exterior, and you do not need to go in for the walk. When you are ready, walk west through the Altstadt, past the late-Gothic Ottoburg at the far end of Herzog-Friedrich-Straße, and come out on Marktplatz at the Inn, about 420 metres from here. Stand at the north edge of the square, at the south end of the Innbrücke, looking across the river. That is our last stop.

You are on Marktplatz, at the south end of the Innbrücke, looking north across the river. The colourful houses on the far bank are the waterfront of Mariahilf and St. Nikolaus, a tight row of painted facades with the mountains rising straight behind them. Those mountains are the Nordkette, and their slopes begin immediately behind the houses. This is the classic Innsbruck view, and it is why so many people stop on this square with a camera. Innsbruck Tourismus recommends photographing it from the market square, and the light is often best in the morning, when the sun is behind you. Evening light is good as well. You can also step onto the pavement of the bridge for a slightly more open outlook; watch the traffic if you do. Innsbruck takes its name from the bridge over the Inn, and a crossing has stood here since the Middle Ages. The present bridge is a late-twentieth-century successor on the same alignment, with pavements on both sides. From the middle of the bridge you look back at the Old Town and the cathedral towers, or forward to Mariahilf and the Nordkette. Just behind you, at the west entrance to the Altstadt, is the Ottoburg, a late-Gothic tower house at Herzog-Friedrich-Straße 1. You passed it on the way in. We began about 1.6 kilometres ago, at the Triumphal Arch, and the walk has stayed on streets and squares. This is the end of the tour. The streets and squares we have used are public and free. If you still have time, the Hungerburgbahn and the Nordkette are a separate, ticketed excursion from the Congress station, not part of this route. Buses and trams stop here at Marktplatz and along the Innrain. Thank you for walking with me through Innsbruck’s Old Town.