Schönbrunn Palace

Summer palace

The Habsburgs' summer residence has 1,441 rooms

Schönbrunn Palace was the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers, in Hietzing, the 13th district of Vienna. The Baroque palace has 1,441 rooms. The name means beautiful spring, from an artesian well from which water was consumed by the court.

1,441rooms in the Baroque palace

Hunting ground

In 1569 Maximilian II bought the floodplain for a hunting ground

In 1569 Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II purchased a large floodplain of the Wien river. He had it fenced and stocked with pheasants, ducks, deer and boar, for the court's recreational hunting. From 1638 to 1643 Eleonora Gonzaga added a palace to the Katterburg mansion.

Maria Theresa

Maria Theresa received the estate as a wedding gift

The palace in its present form was built and remodelled in the 1740s and 1750s by Baron Diego Pereira d'Aguilar, in the reign of Empress Maria Theresa, who received the estate as a wedding gift. Franz I later commissioned the redecoration of the exterior in the neoclassical style.

The gardens

The garden axis points to a hill crowned by the Gloriette

The French garden was planned in 1695 by Jean Trehet, a disciple of André Le Nôtre. The garden axis points towards a 60-metre-high hill, crowned since 1775 by the Gloriette. The Roman Ruin, a set of follies, was erected in 1778 as an entirely new architectural feature.

Franz Joseph

Franz Joseph was born at Schönbrunn and died there in 1916

Franz Joseph, the longest-reigning Emperor of Austria, was born at Schönbrunn and spent a great deal of his life there. He died there on 21 November 1916. After the downfall of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 the palace was preserved as a museum, and American warplanes bombed it in February 1945.