Mature Flâneur
Exuberant Innsbruck
A city with a beautiful soul
One of the things I love most about Tyrolian villages is the vibrant frescos that decorate the walls of most traditional houses. The tiniest of towns becomes a living work of art. Innsbruck, though, is the Grande Dame of them all. Art and architecture combine to make the old town one of the most intoxicating places I’ve ever flâneured through. The tradition is locally known as Lüftlmalerei. It brings the past to life. Here are some examples:
One of the most common techniques is painting the plaster façades to mimic architectural elements such as pillars and stonework. The French call this trompe d’oeil, which literally means “trick of the eye.” Indeed, you have to look closely at these buildings to spot the illusion:
Another decorative technique is adding moulded plaster to the façades, which when done well makes the building look like an elaborate frosted cake. The rococo building known as Helblinghaus in the center of the old town is the most audacious example. It was the home of a Master Plasterer who was clearly not afraid to flaunt his skill to his neighbors.
Old guild signs in the city also caught my eye — a vestige of Innsbuck’s medieval past, the signs are elaborately wrought, gilded, and burnished to shine:
Religious iconography is also a big theme in the old town. Innsbruck had its heyday during the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, and a majority of Austrians remain Catholic to this day. Mary gazes down from atop a pillar in Innsbruck’s central plaza. The Annasäule was erected in 1703 to celebrate the Tryolian’s victory, when they repelled the invading Bavarians, and sent them back over the mountains.
Ineed, Mary seems the predominant cover girl on the façades of Innsbruck. I can’t help but wonder if this devotion is connected to the pre-Christian religion of Tyrolians. Long before the Romans invaded from the south, the people of these alpine valleys, the Raeti, worshiped the goddess Reitia, a good and kind divinity whose gifts included healing and writing.
Why did Innsbruck’s buildings become so exuberant, of all the places in this fertile Alpine valley? Halle, just several miles down the river was the former capital of Tyrol. It’s nice, but not extravagant. What gave Innsbruck that special boost to earn it the title, “Jewel of the Alps” (at least for Austrians)? The answer is revealed in the single most extraordinary building in the old town, one so famous it appears on most Innsbruck postcards and tourist brochures. It’s Innsbruck’s Eiffel Tower, her Statue of Liberty. With every pass of the building Teresa and I made, we saw tourists taking photos, and wedding parties posing for group shots. The Golden Roof is the cherry on the frosted cake that is Innsbruck.
The Golden Roof was made with 2,657 gilded copper shingles in the late 1500s at the direction of The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. The emperor had this balcony built in the royal quarters of previous rulers so that he could watch the people of Innsbruck go about their daily lives. Max was quite a guy, and there is a museum all about him inside the Golden Roof building.
Frankly, I spent more time inside the building, learning the story of this great man, than I did on the outside, bedazzled by the emperor’s bling. I’ll write more about him later. For now, what’s important is that Max loved Innsbruck. It was never officially the capital of the Holy Roman Empire — there wasn’t one. Max “ruled from the saddle” and kept the imperial court on the road, traveling through various parts of the empire throughout his reign. But the itinerant emperor spent more time in Innsbruck than any other city. Under his gaze, beneath that golden awning, the city flourished and prospered.
Innsbruck’s glory days are now long past, except for occasional bursts of prominence when the city hosts the Winter Olympics (which it has done twice). But the afterglow has lasted more than 400 years. You can still feel it on the old town streets. The city feels, well, satisfied with itself. The citizens keep up with the restorations, the façades, and the old town stays tidy despite the tourist throngs. It still radiates that special quality that must have appealed to Maximilian half a millennium ago, and made him want to return to Innsbruck again and again. Me too.
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You can read my previous story on Innsbruck’s mountains here:
