Schloss Wolfurt

Schloss Wolfurt stands in the village of Wolfurt in Vorarlberg, a few kilometres south-west of Bregenz. It began as a medieval fortress first recorded in 1217 and 1226. By the 15th century the Habsburgs made it a princely possession and granted it to Bregenz patrician families such as the Kaisermanns and the Leber von Wolfurts. The monastery of St Gallen bought the building in 1530 and turned it into an abbot’s summer house.

The castle has been rebuilt many times. In 1707 Benedikt Reichart commissioned a Baroque interior. A century later Joseph Xaver Tröndlin von Greiffenegg sold it to farmers and townspeople. After a fire in 1939 the owner Fritz Schindler restored it in Gothic style. From 1945 to 1953 it served as the residence of the French military governor for Vorarlberg.

Today the castle is a private residence surrounded by a small park. Its walls still show traces of the 17th-century Baroque remodelling and the later Gothic revival. The village of Wolfurt lies at the foot of wooded hills, giving the site a quiet, elevated outlook over the Rhine valley.