Puchheim Castle

Puchheim Castle is located in the Puchheim district of the Upper Austrian city of Attnang-Puchheim.

The predecessor building was a fortress, Feste Puchheim, which was first mentioned in a document in 1130 and fell victim to a fire in 1585.

Originally, Feste Puchheim was the ancestral castle of the knightly family of Puchheim. In 1348, Albrecht von Puchheim transferred all his Upper Austrian possessions to the Habsburg Albrecht II of Austria and received Litschau and Heidenreichstein as fiefs in return. In 1462, Duke Albrecht VI sold the castle, and in 1551 it came into the possession of the Polheim family. In 1585, the medieval fortified castle burned down, and the Polheim family erected a four-winged Renaissance-style castle in its place. In the course of the re-Catholicization of the territories "Ob der Enns" by Emperor Rudolf II, the Upper Austrian Peasants' War broke out. After the suppression of the uprising, the possessions of the Polheim family, who had supported the rebellion, were confiscated in 1627 by the Bavarian governor of Upper Austria, Count Adam von Herberstorff. From 1636 to 1767, the castle belonged to the Salburg family, and until 1838, to the Counts of Fuchs.

In 1839, the castle came into the possession of Archduke Maximilian Joseph of Austria-Este, a grandson of Maria Theresia. In 1847, he brought the Jesuits to Puchheim for pastoral care, but they had to leave Puchheim again in the course of the Revolution of 1848/49 (the order was abolished in Austria). In 1851, at the instigation of the Archduke, the Redemptorists came from Altötting, and they now own the main castle with the five-aisled pilgrimage church Maria Puchheim, built on the west side in 1890. The fore-castle is owned by the city of Attnang-Puchheim and the Diocese of Linz, after being owned by the Bourbon family from 1892 to 1993.