Vienna - sightseeing

The imperial Place of Schönbrunn is one of the most important monuments in Vienna, and is part of the UNESCO World Heritage List. It has a huge park with statues, fountains, minor buildings and even a zoo. It is located in the Western area of the city, and can be easily reached by underground.

Its origins date back to 1569 when Emperor Maximilian II acquired the area and turned it into a game preserve for hunting, complete with exotic fowl. The name of the place derives from a beautiful water spring (this is the meaning of Schönbrunn in German), discovered by Emperor Matthias in 1612, and the name was passed on to the first palace built there around 1640. In the course of the century the gardens were improved by the Empresses of the Haugsburg family.

The whole place was devastated during the siege by the Turks in 1683, and a new palace (which was then conceived more as a hunting lodge) was built between 1696 and 1700, and the garden was redesigned in French style. The lodge was then transformed into a real royal palace in the years between 1741 and 1763, during Maria Theresa’s reign, and was filled with expensive furniture and decorations in Rococo style. The gardens were also extended and the whole place became a symbol of the Haugsburg Emperors’ power. In subsequent years the hill underneath the palace was also reshaped, with a new fountain put at the bottom and a new paths which allowed to reach the top. The park was also opened to the public, with some exceptions.

This palace has over 1400 rooms, and only about 40 of them are open to the public. The interiori is magnificent if a bit pompous; the Mirror Room is where the first court exhibition of a six year old Mozart took place.

Some of the highlights of the surrounding area are the Gloriette, a platform on a hill with a great view on the city and the palace, the park in general, which is great for walking around, the Tierpark, which is one of the oldest zoo in the world, the Great Palm House, a huge glasshouse (the biggest in Europe), built around 1880 to host the imperial collection of exotic plants. For more info, visit www.schoenbrunn.at.

The Belvedere Castle is a complex comprising two main buildings and the park that connects them. It is probably one of the most beautiful places in Vienna, also due to the marvellous view of the city you can get from the Upper Belvedere building, and hosts (in both buildings) the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, which has a lot of interesting works exhibited. The first building to be built was the Lower Belvedere, commissioned by the Austrian general Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1714. The Upper Belvedere soon followed in 1717. Both palaces are masterpieces of Baroque architecture, with magnificent halls decorated with stucco and frescos, mostly by prominent Italian artists. The two buildings were then connected with a symmetrical, Italian-style garden, complete with sculptures, fountains, greenhouses and an orangery (which now hosts the Museum of Medieval Art). The complex was bought in 1752 by the Empress Maria Theresa, who first christened it "Belvedere"; for some time, the buildings remained unused or used as barracks for the imperial military guard. In 1776, the Empress decided to move the "Imperial and Royal Picture Gallery" to the Belvedere, and with time the collection grew with new acquisitions. The place was also the residence of the heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, the one whose killing in Sarajevo in 1914 is considered the event that started World War I. The Castle was damaged heavily during air raids in World War II, but has since been magnificently restored, and was the place where the Allies and Austria signed the Treaty that gave back independence to Austria and sanctioned its political neutrality.

Both buildings now host the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere: the Upper building hosts the collection of 19th and 20th century arts, including works by French impressionists and Biedermeier artists. The artists whose works are exhibited here include Renoir, Monet, Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka. The Lower Belvedere hosts the Museum of Medieval Art and the Baroque Museum; the latter is a great chance to see Baroque works of art in a Baroque setting, which makes the experience even more interesting. For more info, visit the Galerie Belvedere website.

This museum is the best in Vienna (and one of the best in Europe!) for Renaissance and Baroque painting, as well as Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities. The Renaissance-style mueseum building in the Vienna Ringstraße was opened in 1891, and houses most of the Habsburg collections. Its interior is beautifully decorated, and creates an incomparable setting for such a vast collection of works of art.

The paintings collection includes painters from Italy, such as Arcimboldo, Jacopo Bassano, Giovanni Bellini, Correggio, Giorgione, Andrea Mantegna, Parmigianino, Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese and Caravaggio; Netherlands masters, such as Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jan Bruegel the Elder, Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer, and Spanish and French painters, including Velázquez and Poussin.

The museum’s Egyptian collection has come together mostly during the 19th and 20th centuries, mostly due to purchases and donations, and is particularly strong in quantity and quality of material for what concerns the Old Kingdom era. The Greek and Roman collections are also very interesting, with a lot of precious items such as vases, jewellery, cameos, beside the statues and reliefs. For more information, visit www.khm.at.