Schönbrunn Palace

At the end of the seventeenth century Emperor Leopold I commissioned the Baroque architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, who had received his training in Rome, to design an imperial hunting lodge for his son, Crown Prince Joseph, later to become Emperor Joseph I. Replacing the château de plaisance built on this site for the dowager empress Eleonora of Gonzaga in 1642, it was to grow into a palatial imperial residence over the course of the eighteenth century.

Tour of the palace

A visit to the piano nobile at Schönbrunn Palace today begins at the Blue Staircase. The tour of the imperial apartments and the magnificent state rooms includes the residential suite of rooms occupied by Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth in the west wing, which are furnished in nineteenth-century style, the state rooms in the central section of the palace, the imperial apartments of Maria Theresa and Franz I Stephan, and the Franz Karl Apartment, which was occupied by Franz Joseph’s parents, Archduchess Sophie and Archduke Franz Karl.

The Grand tour - Forty rooms and forty fascinating stories spanning three centuries.

Imperial Tour - Visit the apartments of Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth and a tour the Rococo state rooms of the palace.

Rooms on the ground floor - On the ground floor are the private apartments of the imperial family, the so-called Bergl Rooms, comprising the Gisela Apartment, the private summer suite used by Empress Maria Theresa, and the Crown Prince Apartment, all painted with landscape murals by the Bohemian artist Johann Wenzel Bergl. These rooms can only be viewed by prior arrangement as part of a group visit.