Castel Moos is a castle originally built as a medieval fortified tower residence, also known as Residenza Moos-Schulthaus from the name of the family that owned it between the 17th and 19th centuries. The museum contains furnishings and frescoes from the 1400s and part of Walter Amonn's collection of paintings by Tyrolean artists from the first half of the 20th century.
Castel Moos-Schulthaus History
Towards the middle of the 13th century the Rottenburger family built a Romanesque-style residential tower above Appiano in the locality of Pigenò.
Around the middle of the 14th century the tower was enlarged and transformed into a hunting lodge After the extinction of the Rottenburg in 1410, the complex passed first into the hands of the princes and later, as a hereditary fiefdom, to the lords of Firmian and around 1500 to the Counts Spaur who transformed it further.
The Gerstl of Gerstburg followed as lords, until 1600 the lords of Tann and finally Eustachius Lanser, after which Moos, due to a marriage, passed to the nobles of Schulthaus, in whose hands it remained until 1850.
This intense change of ownership has also left a mark in the architecture due to the fusion of interconnected construction elements, of intricate rooms located on different levels and not least of stylistic characters from different eras.
In 1958 Walther Amonn, a Bolzano merchant and patron, bought the complex, which had been used until then for agricultural purposes. He had it restored with great expenditure of money and furnished it with artistic objects from different eras, folkloric artistic crafts and also with a collection of paintings by contemporary Tyrolean artists. From 1984 the complex was entrusted to the care of the "Walther Amonn Foundation" which made it accessible to the public. The properties of the foundation are now managed by the "Südtiroler Burgeninstitut" association.
Particularly worthy of attention are the frescoes in the rooms which form a unique example of secular Gothic wall painting and give an idea of the life and philosophy of the time: tendrils, pomegranates and a unicorn in the apartment of the owner of the castle; the so-called “world upside down” with the war of cats and mice, jugglers and jesters in the reception hall; hunting scenes or farcical representations for the participants in a hunting trip.