Hofburg, Innsbruck

The palace sits on ground that was once the town's defence. In the fourteenth century, when Innsbruck was ruled by the House of Gorizia, the city wall ran along the line of the present main facade on the Rennweg; the Rumer Gate, a round tower and a rectangular defensive tower were absorbed into the later building.

The House of Habsburg began its rule of Tyrol in 1361. Between 1395 and 1406 Leopold IV bought up houses and properties around the site, along with two gardens outside the walls, the present Court Garden, and in 1406 his brother Frederick IV, called Frederick with the Empty Pockets, moved the seat of rule from Meran to Innsbruck. Building proper began under Archduke Sigismund, ruler of Tyrol from 1446 and rich on the proceeds of Tyrol's mines: foundations were laid along the old trench and the Harnaschhaus armoury was added, where suits of armour were made and stored. Tradition holds that a banquet was held in a heated hall in 1463.

Under Emperor Maximilian I the castle was enlarged in the late Gothic style and gained a reputation as “the most beautiful building of the late Gothic period”. In 1495 it was extended northwards as the residence of his second wife Bianca Maria Sforza, whose dowry may have paid for the work; the imperial apartments and the banquet hall moved up to the second floor, where the Giants' Hall stands, under the court master builder Nikolaus Thüring the Elder. Fire destroyed the Rumer Gate in 1494, and in 1499 Jörg Kölderer turned what was left of it into the Heraldic Tower. The Rennplatz outside served the emperor as a tournament ground.

In 1533 the Hofburg became the permanent residence of Emperor Ferdinand I and his family. Fire struck the next year, destroying the ceiling of the great hall that had been renewed in 1510; Ferdinand brought in the Italian architect Lucius de Spaciis to redesign the east wing along the Rennweg and build a new banquet hall. When an earthquake cracked the walls in 1536 the front was strengthened with semicircular towers, the ancestors of the two corner roundels.

Ferdinand II pushed the conversion to a Renaissance residence further with the master builder Giovanni Lucchese, and in 1577 the Silver Chapel was added to the wing linking the palace to the Hofkirche. Plans drawn up under Leopold V were shelved by the Thirty Years' War; the palace fell into disrepair, the ruling family moved out to Ruhelust Castle in the Court Garden, and by 1665 the imperial family had settled in Vienna.

The building as it now stands is the work of Empress Maria Theresa, whose reconstruction ran from 1754 to 1776 in two phases either side of the Seven Years' War. Johann Martin Gumpp the Younger drew the plans of 1754 for the south wing on the Hofgasse; after 1765 the east wing was gutted and given new ceilings at a single level, and in 1767 the empress put her court architect Nikolaus Pacassi in charge of the main facade on the Rennweg.

In 1765 she chose Innsbruck for the wedding of her son, the future Emperor Leopold II, to Maria Luisa of Spain. During the celebrations her husband, Emperor Francis I, died suddenly on 18 August after returning from the theatre. On her instructions the anteroom in which he died was rebuilt as the Hofburg chapel in 1765-66, and she founded the Noblewomen's Collegiate Foundation, whose ladies were to pray for the dead emperor; her daughter Maria Elisabeth served as its abbess from 1781 to 1805. After the roof framework was altered in 1774, Franz Anton Maulbertsch painted the Giants' Hall ceiling in 1775-76, an allegory of the union of the houses of Austria and Lorraine.

In 1805 the Habsburgs ceded Tyrol to Napoleon's Bavarian allies, and the Hofburg became a residence of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria. In 1809 the South Tyrolean innkeeper Andreas Hofer led a rising against the Bavarian administration; after the Third Battle of Bergisel on 13 August he moved into the palace and governed Tyrol from it until 21 October. The Congress of Vienna returned Tyrol to Austria.

The imperial apartments were given their last major reorganisation in 1858 on the model of Schönbrunn, August La Vigne fitting them out in Rococo, a different colour for each room. Empress Elisabeth passed the night of 14-15 October 1871 there; Franz Joseph stayed often. With the end of the monarchy in 1918 the palace passed to the state. Bomb damage in the Second World War exposed murals with Chinese motifs, painted in 1773, under later wallpaper; they were restored in 1950-51.