Landhaus zu Appesbach

Enjoy a stay as our personal guests here on this private lakeshore estate.  A feeling conveyed so masterfully by your “Appesbach” hosts;
From its very beginnings, this house was something quite special. The property was intended to be spacious and yet intimate, fulfilling Erbauer’s dream in 1912 of an English  country house in the midst of the Salzkammergut. The park-like grounds with lawns even the British would be proud of, the beautifully maintained gravel driveway and the façades entwined with ivy, shelter this place and its guests to this very day from the intrusions of the outside world. A refuge where so much can readily be forgotten – even the loss of an entire kingdom.  An old photo shows the Duke of Windsor leaning with genteel nonchalance against the balustrade of the terrace. Here, amid the mountains flanking the Wolfgangsee, Edward VIII was able to find the “splendid isolation” he sought after abdicating as King of England. “A magnificent part of the world”, he wrote in a letter to his future wife, Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom he had chosen to forego the throne.
Edward’s favoured form of tobacco pipe was known as the “Prince”. Smoking it during afternoon tea in the salon, or relaxing out on the terrace and enjoying the views out over the lake, were as much a part of his elegant retreat as were playing tennis and golf, or hiking through the glorious surrounding countryside. The duke and this country house, both very “British”, but without any sense of stiffness.
The “Appesbach” continues to radiate this same style and tranquillity. Those who stay here experience a Salzkammergut far removed from the well-trodden pathways. The apartment of the abdicated king welcomes its guests virtually unchanged from those earlier times. Those who stay in the Windsor Suite can climb into the self-same marble tub of the Roman bath, hang their skirts and trousers in the same white eggshell-finished wardrobes and sleep in the same royal beds. For decades, this country house has been run with such loving care, attentiveness and discretion, one might think the Windsors were about to arrive at any minute.