The Bummerlhaus is a gothic building in Steyr, Austria. It is the best preserved late Gothic mansion in Steyr, and is one of the finest medieval secular buildings in Austria. The oldest part of the building dates from the thirteenth century, and it is first mentioned in documents dating from 1450.
The house is a typical Steyr design, consisting of a richly decorated façade facing the square, behind which lies the house and three courtyards with arcades. It has a steep hipped roof. The façade facing the square on the first floor has a cantilevered, stone carved, wide bay window, which spans the entire elevation, adorned with blind arcades and a rich frieze with quatrefoil tracery, among which the five windows are placed asymmetrically. Above the narrow roof of the wide bay window rises a brick gable wall with blind arches of brick.
The name originates from when the building, in the 19th century, housed the Zum Goldenen Löwen inn ('The Golden Lion'). The lion on the signboard for the inn, according to the locals, looked like a dog, Bummerl meaning 'plump little plump dog', and haus, meaning house.
References:The Villa d'Este is a 16th-century villa in Tivoli, near Rome, famous for its terraced hillside Italian Renaissance garden and especially for its profusion of fountains: the extraordinary system contains fifty-one fountains and nymphaeums, 398 spouts, 364 water jets, 64 waterfalls, and 220 basins, fed by 875 meters of canals, channels and cascades, and all working entirely by the force of gravity, without pumps. It is now an Italian state museum, and is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.
Tivoli had been a popular summer residence since ancient Roman times due to its altitude, cooler temperatures and its proximity to the Villa Hadriana, the summer residence of the Emperor Hadrian I.
The Villa was commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este (1509-1572), second son of Alfonso I d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara and grandson of Pope Alexander VI, along with Lucrezia Borgia.