Palais Saurau, Graz

The palace is a three-storey house formed by four wings that frame an almost rectangular inner courtyard. The courtyard is surfaced with Murnockerln (small local paving stones) and is reached through a carriage entrance set beneath a cross-ribbed vaulted ceiling, a vaulted form with intersecting ribs. Originally the south side of the court had colonnaded arcades; most of those arcades have been closed where a staircase was inserted, though fragments of Ionic columns remain on the wing that faces the Schlossberg.

A richly worked rusticated round-arch stone portal, inserted in 1630, marks the principal entrance. The portal bears the Saurau coat of arms and spandrels decorated with the arms of Count Karl von Saurau and his wife Susanna Catharina, Baroness von Teuffenbach. At the arch apex sits a Rocaille cartouche containing an alliance coat of arms for Raimund Maria von Saurau and his first wife, Maria Anna, née Countess of Dietrichstein, carved by the sculptor Johannes Piringer. Above the doorway a highly ornamental wrought-iron transom grille dated to about 1730–1740 tops the portal and stands as an important example of Baroque ironwork in Styria.

A covered arcade passage built by a Saurau owner links the palace directly to the neighbouring Staircase Church, and a cross-vaulted arcade passage dated 1566 can be reached by a staircase at the throughway. A second stair from the first floor leads up into the Schlossberg garden, where an octagonal pavilion sits at the level of the second floor. On the garden’s east side remnants of the old city wall survive; that wall once continued from the inner Paulustor toward the Graz clock tower.

The principal living floor, the piano nobile on the second upper floor, contains three salons and a small cabinet with Rococo decoration dating to about 1770. The ceilings carry gilded stucco ornament and floral border motifs attributed to Heinrich Formentini. Salon walls are hung with damask and the cabinet is wood-paneled. Interior fittings include several white-glazed Louis XVI tiled stoves made circa 1775–1778 by Michael Adamez. On the first upper floor of the south wing three rooms and a cabinet preserve Josephine-era classicizing fittings; their wallpapers were purchased in Brussels in 1830 and show exotic trees, shrubs, birds and butterflies.

A distinctive movable half-figure, the so-called “Turk,” projects from a hatch beneath the roof cornice and holds a sword in its outstretched right hand. This rotating Quintana figure functioned as a tournament opponent substitute for equestrian practice. The original is exhibited in the Graz City Museum since 1951, while a replica occupies the façade hatch; local tradition connects the figure with the 1532 siege of Graz, although the palace itself dates from the 1560s.