En un regard
Le château en bref
The Upper Castle (Oberes Schloss) of Zizers, in the canton of Graubünden, is an intimate manor house built in 1680 for Baron Simon von Salis (1646–1694), of the Tirano branch. It is one of the two palaces that the von Salis-Zizers family had erected in the village in the seventeenth century, alongside the Lower Castle. It takes the form of a three-storey cube preceded by a flight of steps, beneath a high hipped roof, with slight suspended balconies at the mezzanine level and a façade decorated with trompe-l'œil architectural paintings. Inside, the staircase and corridors received a painted decoration of biblical motifs within architectural frames around 1750, now overpainted; the hall and the library retain Régence-style stucco work from around 1725, two other rooms have white-lacquered panelling from the late eighteenth century with Louis XVI motifs, and there are Steckborn stoves dating from 1722 and around 1730. The castle was remodelled around 1725 and again in 1790–1800. It housed a large library and the family archives, which were acquired in 1982 by the Graubünden State Archives following the extinction of the family with Franziska (d. 1976) and Therese von Salis-Zizers (d. 1977). The exterior was restored in 1976–1984, and the interior partly in 2003–2004.
