Schloss Fuschl

A castle on a tongue of land, water on three sides, the Schafberg rising across the lake. The image of Schloss Fuschl is known to anyone who has seen the Sissi films of the 1950s, in which it stood in for the Bavarian home of the future empress. The house sits in Hof bei Salzburg, twenty kilometres east of the city, and has been a hotel since the 1950s.

History

The prince-archbishops of Salzburg built the lodge in the middle of the fifteenth century as a base for hunting in the forests around the lake, and kept it for three centuries. After the secularisation of the archbishopric it passed through private hands. In 1938 the Austrian owner, Gustav von Remiz, was dispossessed and died in a concentration camp; the castle was taken over as a residence for Joachim von Ribbentrop and used by the Nazi leadership until 1945. The Remiz family recovered it after the war and sold it. From 1955 to 1957 Ernst Marischka filmed the three Sissi pictures with Romy Schneider partly at Fuschl, and the hotel that had opened in the castle became a destination on the strength of them. In the 1970s it passed to the Schörghuber group of Munich, which ran it for decades, latterly under the Luxury Collection flag. Schörghuber closed the hotel in 2020 for a complete reconstruction and reopened it in July 2024 under Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, the brand's first property in Austria.

Architecture and design

The core is the square late-Gothic tower house of the 1450s, with later wings and a lakeside terrace added when it became a hotel, and the Jagdhof, a separate building across the park, with further rooms. The 2020 to 2024 works stripped the twentieth-century additions and rebuilt the interiors in a lighter Alpine idiom, with pale timber, stone, local linen and the castle's collection of old-master paintings rehung in the public rooms. Lakeside cottages in the park were rebuilt as private suites.

Rooms and suites

The house reopened with just under a hundred rooms, suites and lake cottages divided between the castle, the Jagdhof and the shoreline. The castle rooms in the tower have the deep window seats and vaulted ceilings of the medieval building and look straight down the lake; the cottages have their own jetties. Bathrooms are in stone with free-standing tubs.

Dining

The restaurant in the castle serves Austrian cooking with fish from the lake, which the hotel's own fishery has supplied for generations; the Schloss Fuschl smoked trout is sold in the fishery shop by the road. A lakeside terrace and a bar occupy the ground floor of the tower, and a second restaurant in the Jagdhof covers the park side.

Wellness

The spa was rebuilt in the restoration with an indoor pool, saunas, treatment rooms and a lakeside bathing area with a jetty and a boathouse; guests swim in the lake from May to September. The hotel also keeps a fleet of wooden boats and a vintage car collection for excursions.

Weddings and events

Schloss Fuschl has been one of the most sought-after wedding addresses in the Salzkammergut since the 1950s. Ceremonies are held in the castle's chapel or on the lawn by the water, with dinner in the castle salons; the park and terrace take receptions of a few hundred guests. Meeting rooms in the Jagdhof serve seminars and retreats for companies from Salzburg and Munich.

Location

The castle is on the B158 between Salzburg and St Gilgen, twenty-five minutes by car from the city and forty from Salzburg airport. Salzburg Hauptbahnhof is the nearest station. The Wolfgangsee and the Mondsee are each fifteen minutes further on, and the Salzburg Festival each summer fills the house. As a luxury hotel in the Salzkammergut it has few rivals for the view alone.