Graz entdecken

The Landhaus on Herrengasse is the former seat of the Styrian Estates and one of the major Renaissance buildings of Graz, its main wing built from 1557 to plans by Domenico dell'Allio. Visitors can walk into the three-storey arcaded courtyard, used for concerts and events; the Baroque Landstube inside is the chamber of the Styrian state parliament.

The Styrian Armoury is a historic arsenal on Herrengasse in Graz, built in 1642–1645 by Antonio Solar to equip troops on Styria's frontier with the Ottoman Empire. Its four floors still hold some 32,000 objects from the 15th to the 18th century, among them suits of armour, helmets, swords, pikes, firearms and cannons, kept in rows as in an arsenal.

The Joanneumsviertel is the museum quarter of the Universalmuseum Joanneum in central Graz, joining the Baroque Lesliehof of 1665–1674 and the neo-Baroque Neues Joanneum of 1895. Since a rebuild in 2011, glass cones in its square light an underground visitor centre that leads to the Neue Galerie Graz with the BRUSEUM and to the Natural History Museum.

Graz Cathedral is the seat of the Diocese of Graz-Seckau, built in 1438–1462 as the Gothic court church of Emperor Frederick III and later used by the Jesuits. Its south wall carries the Gottesplagenbild, a fresco of the plague, war and locusts that struck Graz in 1480; inside are a marble high altar of 1730–1733 and two ivory reliquary chests once owned by Paola Gonzaga.

The Mausoleum of Emperor Ferdinand II stands beside Graz Cathedral and joins St Catherine's Church to an oval burial chapel, begun in 1614 by the court artist Giovanni Pietro de Pomis. Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach designed the stucco and high altar of the church from 1687; the crypt holds the graves of Ferdinand II and his first wife, Maria Anna of Bavaria.

Graz Castle is the former residence of the Habsburg archdukes of Inner Austria, begun in 1438 by Duke Frederick V, later Emperor Frederick III. It now houses the office of the Styrian governor; visitors can enter the courtyards and see the Gothic double spiral staircase, whose two flights part and meet again, built between 1494 and 1500 under Maximilian I.

Kunsthaus Graz is a museum of contemporary art on the right bank of the Mur, built for Graz's year as European Capital of Culture in 2003. Peter Cook and Colin Fournier designed its curved body of blue acrylic panels, nicknamed the Friendly Alien, which takes in the façade of the 1848 Iron House and shows exhibitions of art from the 1960s onwards.

The Murinsel is an artificial floating platform of steel and glass in the middle of the river Mur in Graz, designed by the New York artist Vito Acconci for the European Capital of Culture year 2003. About 47 metres long and shaped like a shell, it is reached by footbridges from both banks and holds a café, a small open-air amphitheatre and a children's play area.

Graz Opera is the city's neo-Baroque opera house on the Opernring, designed by Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer and opened in 1899 with Schiller's William Tell, followed by Wagner's Lohengrin. Repaired after bomb damage in the Second World War, it stages opera, operetta, musicals and ballet, and its orchestra also plays concerts as the Graz Philharmonic.

The Schlossberg is a wooded dolomite hill rising above the old town of Graz to 473 metres, once crowned by a fortress that Napoleon's troops largely demolished in 1809. The townspeople paid to spare the Clock Tower and the Bell Tower, and since 1839 the hill has been a park, reached on foot, by lift or by the Schlossbergbahn funicular of 1894.

Eggenberg Palace is the Baroque residence of the Eggenberg princes on the western edge of Graz, built from 1625 for Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg to plans by Giovanni Pietro de Pomis. Guided tours lead through 24 state rooms around the Planetary Room; the landscape park holds the Planet Garden, the Archaeology Museum, and the palace the Alte Galerie and a coin collection.