March 19,2017 (Innsbruck, Austria)

During my travels around Europe this time, I’ve discovered that I really like folk museums. I like museums in general but I’ve found that folk museums contain relics of everyday items such as household appliances that give you a sense of how everyday people of a region lived and worked. To me, these museums make history come alive and a past epoch become tangible.

Innsbruck has one such museum called the Tyrolean Folk Art Museum (Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum in German) located in the Old Town section, across from Hofburg (the former Hapsburgs palace) and the Landestheater (state theater). When you go, you have the option to buy a combination ticket that includes the museum and the Hofkirche,  court church, located next to the museum.

We enjoyed this museum. One of the things that really stood our for us was that it housed whole kitchens taken right out of actual Tyrolean houses. These wood-paneled rooms were relocated to the museum and ranged in styles from the Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque periods.

Other items of interest included household furniture such as wardrobes, chests, beds, tables, chairs, and ceramic stoves; as well as handicrafts, jewelry, kitchenware, and clothes from different time periods. It was nice because none of these were reproductions but actual items that people once owned.

The museum is housed in what previously was a Franciscan monastery. The exhibits occupy four wings of the monastery and surrounds a Renaissance courtyard:

Next, we walked through a door thinking there would be another room of displayed items and what caught our eyes took our breath away. We had walked in to the upper level of the Hofkirche and the splendor of it loomed below us.

Hofkirche is a Gothic church built in 1553 by Emperor Ferdinand I in dedication to the memory of his grandfather Emperor Maximilian I, whose cenotaph is located in the middle of the aisle. The church also houses the tomb of Tyrol’s national hero, Andreas Hofer.

This church included many Renaissance features and red marble columns topped with Corinthian capitals. According to Wikipedia, its buttresses are a combination of contemporary Renaissance and German late Gothic style.

Looking at the church from the ground level:

Of course, this day wouldn’t be complete without gelato from one of the main gelato shops  downtown, Tomaselli Gelateria.

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