Hofburg Brixen / Bressanone

The Hofburg in Brixen is a four-winged palace building with three floors and two front buildings. The entrance to the castle is located on the east side, formerly only accessible via a drawbridge. Today, a brick bridge leads over the moat to the stucco-decorated entrance hall. The visual courtyard axis is formed by the portal system and the west wing. The interior of the castle also offers numerous sights, such as the court church, the bishop's and emperor's tract, and the court council office.

The foundation of the diocesan museum dates back to 1897, but it was not opened until four years later. The museum was mainly founded to preserve endangered works of art. In addition, it also served as a teaching collection for various educational institutions. Another essential part consisted of objects from the Brixen Cathedral. In addition, numerous art objects, panel paintings, and sculptures from the Diocese of Brixen were added. These were either gifts, loans, or purchased by the museum.

An essential part of the museum is medieval art. The collection includes, for example, early Gothic and late Romanesque madonnas, late Gothic sculptures or panel paintings by Hans Leinberger, Vigil Raber, or Jörg Lederer. In addition, the collection also includes manuscripts, textiles, and liturgical objects. Other artworks presented in the museum come from the Renaissance, Baroque, as well as the 19th and 20th centuries. The Brixen Cathedral treasure is also very well known, documenting the sacred culture and art development in the Middle Ages and the Baroque period. Part of the treasure is still in use and can be found in the cathedral sacristy. In 2001, the province of South Tyrol also purchased the Siegfried Unterberger collection and made it available to the Hofburg as a permanent loan. The works mainly include portrait and genre painting, as well as landscape representations.

Already under Prince-Bishop Karl Franz Graf Lodron, a great nativity tradition was established in Brixen. He had a yearly nativity scene made by Josef Benedikt and August Alois Probst, consisting of 5000 figures depicting the entire life of Jesus. Another nativity scene was set up in the church of the castle, created by Franz Xaver Nissl. The large-scale representations by Nissl and the Probst brothers with their expressive gestures form the main part of the nativity scene collection.