Hitler's Austrian birthplace transformed into police station

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Austria opened a new police station in Adolf Hitler's former house on Wednesday, in the hope of deterring today's ascendant far-right extremists from making the pilgrimage to the Nazi dictator's birthplace.

In a ceremony to mark the opening, Johannes Waidbacher, mayor of the small town of Braunau-am-Inn, said he hoped the transformation would show that the local community is "confronting its history, that it is assuming responsibility".

The decision to turn the house into a police station follows a long and delicate debate over what to do with the site, in a country often criticised for not taking full responsibility for its role in the Holocaust.

"I believe that the opening of the police station today brings clarity to the discussion, perhaps also a bit of calm for the people of Braunau," the mayor said, in a ceremony also attended by Interior Minister Gerhard Karner.

Around 100 people watched an orchestra play in the house's courtyard, including around 30 officers in uniform -- though few local residents made the trip.

Braunau’s mayor Johannes Waidbacher poses on July 16, 2026 next to a commemoration stone with the inscription "For peace in freedom and democracy.

After a 20-million-euro ($23-million) refurbishment finished three years behind schedule, the unassuming building where one of history's most notorious figures was born is all but unrecognisable.

'Place of democracy'

The roughcast yellow walls of the 17th-century home near the German border, where the future Fuehrer was born on April 20, 1889, have been whitewashed over by the Austrian architecture firm Marte.

A police sign hangs above the entrance, while the pavement still bears a memorial stone with the inscription: "For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism. Millions of Dead Warn."

Interior Minister Karner said that from now on the house would be "a place of democracy, of the rule of law, of security, of freedom, and of human dignity".

"And at the same time... the memory does not disappear, nothing is covered up. The memorial stone in front of this house, hewn from the granite of the former Mauthausen concentration camp, remains in place," he said.

After Hitler's Germany annexed its Alpine neighbour in 1938, 65,000 Austrian Jews were killed and another 130,000 forced into exile.

But the country's most popular political party is now the far-right FPOe, which was founded by former Nazis. Around 37 percent of Austrians back the party, according to polling aggregator Europe Elects.

The house, which had been in the hands of the same family from 1912, was from 1972 leased to the Austrian state and used as a centre for disabled people, who were also among the Third Reich's victims.