The Red House, Vaduz's other landmark, among the vines

If I had to pick a single image of Vaduz, it wouldn’t be the castle on its own. It would be this red house with its tower, the vines in front and the castle up on its rock. The Historical Lexicon calls it the capital’s second landmark, and I think it’s more photogenic than the first.

A winegrower’s house with five centuries of owners

The Red House isn’t an open monument; it’s a house with a past and people living in it. In 1338 a building belonging to the Vaistli family, minor local nobility, appears in a document for the first time in this area. The Lexicon is cautious and says nobody knows whether it was this house. Around 1500 it passed to the Litscher family, and in 1525 Josef Litscher sold it with its barn, wine press and vineyards to the Swiss monastery of Sankt Johann im Thurtal, which used it to manage its estates in Vaduz. Much of what you see probably goes back to the first half of the 16th century.

After secularisation, the canton of St Gallen sold it in 1807 to Johann Rheinberger, and in 1867 it passed to Peter Rheinberger, whose descendants still live there. In 1846, too, a Rheinberger daughter gave rooms here for the village’s first girls’ school, taught by two nuns from the Tyrol.

What Egon Rheinberger did

The look we know is the work of a son of the house, from a family that mattered a great deal in Vaduz. His father, Peter Rheinberger, was the state engineer who in 1866-1867 designed the Landtag’s first building of its own, and his uncle was the composer Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, born in Vaduz in 1839 and teacher of nearly 600 students in Munich. So this isn’t just a pretty house; it’s home to one of the families who shaped modern Vaduz.

Egon Rheinberger was born here in 1870, trained as a sculptor in Munich and came back to Liechtenstein in 1902. Between 1902 and 1905 he linked the stepped-gable house to the old wine press with a tower of his own design, and fitted a Gothic panelled room brought from Feldkirch. It was his first work as an architect in the country. He went on to draw up restoration plans for Vaduz Castle and to rebuild Gutenberg Castle in Balzers, where he lived from 1912.

Inside, according to the Lexicon, there’s late Gothic panelling in the tower room, two Renaissance door frames from 1561, a green tiled stove with figured reliefs and an inlaid Renaissance cupboard. You can’t go in, so I mention them just so you know what’s behind the façade.

Built in 1338? A date that needs a caveat

Here’s where many visitors are misled, and it isn’t their fault. The tourist board says the house was built in 1338. The Historical Lexicon says a building in the area is recorded that year and it isn’t clear it’s the same one. I’ll stick with the careful version, recorded on this spot since 1338, and with what is certain, which is that the tower is only just over a century old.

Where to take the photo and how to get there

The house sits among the vineyards of the Mitteldorf in Vaduz, north of the centre. The classic shot is from below, vines in front and the castle on its rock behind. Prefer not to walk? The Vaduz Citytrain pulls up here specifically for photos between 1 April and 31 October, leaving the town hall at 13:00 and 16:30.

If you’re walking further, stage 3 of the Liechtenstein Trail passes the Red House after the Prince’s winery, on the way to Schaan.

Looking without intruding

It’s a lived-in home, listed as a monument since 1951. I’d stay on the lanes and paths, without walking into the vineyard or peering at the door. The wine press stopped working in 1989, but the vines have always belonged to the house, as the Lexicon puts it. Ten minutes and some afternoon light give you the best of it, and I’d resist the urge to linger by the gate, since this is somebody’s front garden. Then, to round things off with the castle in view, you can head up the path to Vaduz Castle.