Dunklhof

On your right, look for the yellow plaster house with a slightly overhanging upper floor and a steep tiled roof; that projecting facade along Kirchengasse is the unmistakable clue.

This is the Dunklhof, once called the Stippelhof, one of Steyr’s most important late Gothic town houses. Its oldest part dates to the fifteenth century, and for a time it served as the seat of lower jurisdiction... in plain English, this is where smaller legal cases got handled, which gives the house a wonderfully practical kind of dignity. The most striking exterior feature is that overhang above you: the upper story juts forward beyond the ground floor, a structural flex from a very confident medieval builder.

What really made the Dunklhof famous sits inside: a Renaissance arcaded courtyard from around fifteen twenty to fifteen twenty-five. An arcade is a row of open arches, and here the columns are decorated, while the corner piers carry tracery ornament, carved stone patterns that look almost like lace. If you check the image on your screen, you can see why many people call it Steyr’s finest arcaded courtyard.

The house changed hands many times, and from eighteen thirty-four Christian Brittinger ran a pharmacy here. The sign still remembers the Heilige Geist Apotheke, the oldest pharmacy in Steyr. In the twentieth century, architect Heinrich Dunkl lived and worked here, and his wife, the poet Dora Dunkl, began her first “Evening Music at the Dunklhof” in nineteen fifty-nine. Some houses host people. This one hosted jurisprudence, medicine, poetry, and concerts.

Dunklhof is a townhouse with unusually good taste in second careers.

Take a moment here, and when you’re ready, we’ll head on to the next stop.