Philippine Welser at Schloss Ambras

The marriage that explains the building

Ferdinand II, born 1529, sovereign of Tyrol from 1564, married Philippine Welser secretly. She was not of a rank the court would have approved, and the rebuilding of Ambras between 1563 and 1567 by Italian architects is the practical result: a Renaissance residence, a few kilometres outside Innsbruck, into which he entered in 1567. Almost everything a visitor likes about Ambras follows from a private arrangement between two people. The full chronology.

The bath

Preserved in its original form, which at Ambras means what it says. It is the quietest thing in the castle and the one room where the building stops being a collection and becomes a house somebody lived in. After the armour and the Spanish Hall, the change of register lands hard. Where it comes on the route.

What survives of her, and what does not

She died in 1580, fifteen years before Ferdinand. The collections he assembled around their life here were eventually taken to Vienna, the last of them in 1805, and the castle became a museum in 1880. What did not travel is the architecture: the rooms are still the rooms, which is exactly the argument the Kunst- und Wunderkammer rests on as well.

Her name on the map

If you take tram 3 towards Amras you get off at Philippine-Welser-Straße, about 1.2 km from the gate. It is the longest of the approaches and the only one that tells you whose castle you are walking to. All five routes out.

The ticket that includes her bath

The castle’s own admission covers the bath, the Kunstkammer, the armouries, the Spanish Hall and the Strasser glass, at the same online figure the castle’s shop asks, around sixteen euros, two euros under the door price, with free cancellation up to 24 hours before.

Frequently asked questions