With Innsbruck’s rise to the status of a residence city, a true building boom began. Anyone who wished to wield influence needed to have a residence in the city, in order to be as close as possible to the centre of power. In the period before newspapers, a regular postal system, fax, and email, politics was conducted primarily through direct personal contact. One family was particularly closely associated with this development and played a decisive role in transforming the settlement at the Inn Bridge into a stone-built city in a contemporary Gothic style. In the fifteenth century, Sigismund the Rich in Coin brought Niklas Türing (1427–1496) to Innsbruck. Türing first appears in the historical record in 1488. The Türings were a family of stonemasons and master builders from Memmingen in what is now Swabia, a region that at the time belonged as part of Further Austria to the Habsburg Monarchy. Innsbruck had already been the seat of the provincial government for several decades, but architectural grandeur north of the Alps had yet to take hold. The city consisted largely of wooden houses and was scarcely representative. Over the course of the late Middle Ages, Gothic and, somewhat later, Renaissance art had enveloped Europe in a new architectural idiom, founded on a new understanding of architecture and aesthetics. Buildings such as Notre Dame or York Minster set a trend that would shape much of Europe until the onset of the Baroque. Pointed towers, ribbed vaults, bay windows, and playful carvings depicting scenes of courtly life are among the typical features that give this heterogeneous style its distinctive character. For craftsmen and builders, golden times dawned—times that would gather even greater momentum under Maximilian.

During this transitional period between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era, the Türings left a lasting mark on Gothic Innsbruck. Their work can be traced particularly well in the Old Town. Many of the town houses, such as the Trautson House, still preserve Gothic ground plans, inner courtyards, and carved elements today. Thanks to their training, the Türings combined an eye for the overall structure with attention to detail in their building projects. They were renowned for their exceptionally fine stonework, which made it possible to create elaborate portals, arcades, staircases, and vaults. They produced ornamental reliefs with patterns typical of Renaissance art; grotesques, vases, and animal motifs were characteristic forms of embellishment for bay windows and plain walls. The symmetrical arrangement of individual elements is another hallmark of the period. A substantial part of the Golden Roof (Goldenes Dachl) is attributable to Niklas Türing. He also created the statue of the castle giant Haidl, an exceptionally tall member of Sigismund’s bodyguard, which can still be seen today in the City Tower. Emperor Maximilian held him in such high esteem that he permitted him to immortalise both the Türing family coat of arms and that of his wife—a fountain and a fish—in the vaulting of the Golden Roof. His son Gregor likewise left his mark, among other works, with the Trautson House in Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse and the House of the Castle Giant in Domgasse. Thanks to careers that advanced in step with the city’s development, the Türings gained not only fame and honour but also considerable wealth. A record from 1497 reports that Niklas Türing served the provincial ruler as a “salaried court mason.” When he died—either in 1517 or 1518, the precise year is unknown—his gravestone titled him “Chief Master Builder to His Roman Imperial Majesty.” Together with his son Gregor, he was listed as a master stonemason. The building boom also enabled the Türings to acquire citizenship in Innsbruck. By 1506 at the latest, they owned a house in the workers’ and artisans’ quarter of Anbruggen. In 1509 they were able to purchase the building that today houses the Gasthof zum Lamm in Mariahilfstrasse, and they later acquired additional property at what is now Schlossergasse 21.

The last member of the Türing family to exert a formative influence on Innsbruck’s building scene was Niklas Türing the Younger, who, together with Andrea Crivelli, began the planning work on the Hofkirche. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the influence of Gothic architecture—particularly in what is now Austria—began to wane. In the course of the Counter-Reformation, churches in particular were increasingly rebuilt or newly constructed in the Baroque style. Today, Türingstrasse in eastern Innsbruck commemorates this early modern dynasty of master builders.