BRAUNAU, Austria – Living space in Braunau is scarce, but an imposing Renaissance-era building stands empty in this postcard pretty Austrian town because of the sinister shadow cast by a former tenant: Adolf Hitler.

With its thick walls, huge arched doorway and deep-set windows, the 500-year-old house near the town square normally would be prime property. Because Hitler was born here, it has become a huge headache for town fathers forced into deciding what to do with a landmark so intimately linked to evil.

The building was most recently used as a workshop for the mentally handicapped, which some saw as atonement for the murders of tens of thousands of disabled people by the Nazi regime. But that tenant moved out last year for more modern quarters.