Plaster as Prestige

At the corner of Sporgasse and Hauptplatz, stone pillars form an arcaded ground-floor walkway while the upper storeys present a dense blanket of Baroque stucco relief. Beneath this ornate shell lies a structural core dating back to the 15th century. Around 1660 to 1670, Italian and Swiss plasterers—attributed to Antonio Teruggio and Domenico Boscho—wrapped the building in lavish plasterwork featuring floral garlands, relief masks, and subtle human noses and mouths woven directly into the stucco. This relief was not purely decorative; placed at a prominent market-square junction, it functioned as an early exercise in private architectural branding. By transforming a modest medieval building into an eye-catching visual billboard, the owners used facade design to signal wealth and social standing to every merchant passing below.