Architectural Walks in Graz

Few cities of this size show eight centuries of architecture as clearly as Graz. Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque stand side by side in a World Heritage old town, and a few minutes away are some of the most talked-about modern buildings in Austria. Graz is also a UNESCO City of Design. The walk below takes about three hours and runs roughly in order of age.

Gothic: Cathedral and Burg

Start on the hill above the old town. The cathedral was built in the fifteenth century as the court church of Emperor Frederick III; outside, look for the fresco known as the Plagues Picture, painted after 1480, which shows Graz threatened by locusts, war and plague. Opposite, in the Burg, is the double spiral staircase of 1499, two stone stairs that separate and reunite on every floor and one of the finest pieces of late Gothic stonework in Europe. In the lower town, the Franciscan church by the river has a Gothic choir with modern stained glass.

Renaissance: The Landhaus

In the sixteenth century, Italian architects came to Graz to rebuild its fortifications and stayed to change its face. The Landhaus on Herrengasse, begun in 1557 by Domenico dell'Allio, has a courtyard with three tiers of arcades that would look at home in Lombardy. Many houses in the old town hide smaller arcaded courtyards from the same period behind plain street fronts; the ones off Sackstrasse and Hofgasse are worth looking for.

Baroque: Mausoleum, Palaces and Painted Facades

The mausoleum of Emperor Ferdinand II, beside the cathedral, was designed by the court artist Giovanni Pietro de Pomis from 1614, and its domes and turquoise roofs are a landmark of the skyline. On Hauptplatz, the Luegg houses have seventeenth-century stucco facades above deep arcades. On Herrengasse, the Gemaltes Haus is covered from top to bottom in frescoes of Greek and Roman gods, painted in 1742. Palais Attems on Sackstrasse is the most important Baroque palace in the city, and Schloss Eggenberg, a tram ride west, is a complete Baroque palace whose design is based on the calendar and the planets.

Nineteenth Century: Town Hall and Opera

After the city walls came down, Graz built the institutions of a confident middle-class city. The town hall on Hauptplatz dates from the 1880s in a grand historicist style. The opera house, opened in 1899, was designed by Fellner and Helmer, the Viennese firm that built theatres across Central Europe. The red-brick Herz-Jesu-Kirche, a neo-Gothic church east of the centre, has one of the tallest church towers in Austria.

Contemporary: The Friendly Alien and After

From the 1960s a group of local architects known as the Graz School made the city a centre of experimental building. The year as European Capital of Culture, 2003, produced the two best-known results. The Kunsthaus, by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, is a blue biomorphic shape with a skin of acrylic panels that lights up at night, set against a nineteenth-century cast-iron building. The Murinsel, by the New York artist Vito Acconci, is a shell of steel and glass floating in the river. Later additions include the MUMUTH music theatre by UNStudio with its twisting staircase, the underground entrance to the Joanneum quarter with its glass cones, the roofscape of the Kastner & Öhler department store, and an apartment building by Zaha Hadid Architects near the old town.

Tips for an Architecture Walk

• •Look up: the best stucco, frescoes and roof details are above shop level.
• •Walk through open gateways. Many courtyards are publicly accessible during the day.
• •See the Kunsthaus twice, by day and after dark, when the facade is lit.
• •The Schlossberg and the Freiblick roof terrace give the best overview of the roofscape that UNESCO protects.
• •A guide with an architecture background can get you into courtyards and stairwells you would not find alone.