The 17th Century

After Prince Hans Ulrich was made Governor of Inner Austria in 1625, he immediately commissioned the most important court artist in the country, Giovanni Pietro de Pomis, with the planning and design of his new residence. His enormous cash reserves made it possible for him to complete the structure of the building in only ten years - even during the turbulent period of the Thirty Years' War - by incorporating large sections of the former castle. After de Pomis' death in 1631, his foremen Pietro Valnegro and Antonio Pozzo were commissioned to complete the new residence. The palace was at least temporarily occupied from the middle of the seventeenth century, but the main residence of the time still remained the City Palace or "Stadtpalais" at the foot of the Schlossberg hill (now located in the Sackstrasse 16). And it was not until the second half of the 17th century that Prince Johann Seyfried von Eggenberg, Hans Ulrich's grandson, was finally able to bring all work to a close by incorporating all the designs, furniture, tapestries and decorations into the state rooms and the Planetary Room in 1685.