The Badeschloss is one of the most photogenic of Bad Gastein's decaying grand hotels — a late 19th-century palace that looms above the town centre in a state of beautiful dereliction. For decades it stood empty, its ornate facade crumbling and its windows dark, a monument to the town's long decline as a fashionable resort.
The Badeschloss has become something of an emblem for the architectural photography and urban decay tourism that now attracts a different kind of visitor to Bad Gastein. Several of the other grand hotels in the upper town — the Straubinger, the Kaiserhof — have been restored or converted to apartments, but the Badeschloss's fate has been slower to resolve. Even in its current state it is worth photographing from the valley below, where the whole cliff-hung townscape — waterfall, hotels, and all — can be taken in at once.