The Spanish Hall at Schloss Ambras

Twenty-seven rulers and a free-standing hall

Ferdinand II had it built between 1569 and 1572, three years after he entered Innsbruck, and it was one of the first free-standing hall buildings north of the Alps. The 27 full-length portraits are of the rulers of Tyrol, painted down the length of the room, and the effect is a genealogy you walk through rather than read. Where those rulers fit.

The cold, which nobody mentions

I have taken visitors into this hall in February in light coats and watched the conversation stop being about the paintings. A free-standing stone hall holds winter, and it is a longer room than people expect, so you are in it for a while. This is a small thing and it is the sort of small thing that decides whether somebody enjoys the last hour of a visit. What a winter visit is like.

Getting into it

A stair lift reaches the Spanish Hall, which matters because Ambras states plainly that a historic building of this kind cannot be made barrier-free throughout. Lifts serve the Lower Castle exhibitions and the lavatories in the Upper Castle are barrier-free; the gardens and the gothic sculptures are not. The castle’s own accessibility statement, in plain English.

Where it sits in the visit

The hall comes after the armouries and before the Bath of Philippine Welser, and it is the room most people photograph. It is open every month the castle is, so a December ticket still buys it. That ticket is the castle’s own admission, sold on the platform at the same online figure the castle’s shop asks, around sixteen euros, which is two euros under the price at the door. The route in order.

Check dates for the castle ticket

One admission covers the Spanish Hall, the Kunst- und Wunderkammer, the three armouries, the bath and the Strasser glass, and the Upper Castle between April and October. Rated 4.6 from more than 240 ratings.

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