Ambras Castle

Ambras Castle is one of Innsbruck's most important sights. Its cultural-historical importance is inextricably linked with the personality of Archduke Ferdinand II (1529-1595), who promoted the arts and sciences as a true Renaissance prince. He founded the magnificent Ambras collections, for which he had a museum complex designed according to the most modern criteria built in the lower castle.

In today's exhibition, an attempt is being made to reconstruct the Archduke's Art and Curiosity Chamber, his hero armory and armory chambers, and his antiquarian book. In the high castle were at Ferdinand times the living rooms. Today, there is the Habsburg portrait gallery on three floors with portraits of Albrecht III. (1349-1395) to see Emperor Franz I (1768-1835). More than 200 portraits are exhibited, among them the most valuable works by well-known artists such as Lukas Cranach, Anton Mor, Titian, van Dyck and Diego Velásquez. On the ground floor of the high castle, the collection of late medieval sculptures is housed, the showpiece of which is the Georgian altar of Emperor Maximilian I. Admire one of the largest glass collections in the world. The Strasser glass collection includes precious Renaissance and Baroque creations from Venice, Bohemia, Silesia and Tyrol.

A beautiful castle with a large and beautifully landscaped castle park.
It also houses the oldest museum in the world

From the original castle of the counts Andechs nothing is preserved in the current building stock, since it was destroyed in 1133. The keep, the palas and the foundations of the chapel date back to the 13th and 14th centuries, when Ambras was owned by the Gorizians.
The cross vault of the Palas goes back to Sigmund the Coined.
The change to the Renaissance castle took place through the rebuilding of Archduke Ferdinand II (1529-1595), who acquired the castle in June 1564 by 15,300 fl. Master builders were Giovanni and his son Alberto Luchese, according to plans by the architect Giovanni Battista Guarienti (Johann Guarient, or Quarient), where Ferdinand II, demonstrably co-determined the construction in the planning stage.
In the process, the Spanish Hall was also built and work began on the construction of the "lower castle", an irregular, open-plan, open-plan complex in the east to house the library and the museum.
It was one of the earliest explicit museum buildings of all time and is today the only surviving Renaissance in which the collections are still exhibited. Also created the "ball game house", the "civil servants house" and the "wardens house".

Source: Wikipedia