July 7, 2019

On our second day in Vienna (and 2nd to last day of our Grand European Tour cruise!), we visited Schönbrunn Palace. This 1,441-room palace was the summer residence of the Habsburg rulers and is a major tourist attraction in Vienna. The palace in its current form was built in the 1740s-1750s during the reign of empress Maria Theresa who received the estate as a wedding present. Her husband, Franz, had the exterior of the palace redecorated in neoclassical style as it is today.

The only female Habsburg ruler, Maria Theresa ruled for 40 years. She and Francis (Franz) I, the Holy Roman Emperor, had sixteen (!) children – eleven daughters, including the Queens of France and Naples, and five sons, two of which were Holy Roman Emperors. Thirteen of her children survived infancy. There is a portrait of her in the palace and when it was pointed out to us, the guide told us the story of Austria’s female empress. We gasped when she told us the empress had 16 children!

The longest reigning emperor of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph I, was born at Schönbrunn Palace in 1830 and spent much of his life there. He reigned from the end of 1848 until his death in 1916. The end of World War I saw the fall of the Habsburg empire so the palace was given to the Austrian Republic and preserved as a museum.

As with all the palaces we visited in Europe, photography was not allowed inside, so all my photos are of the palace’s exterior and its extensive gardens.

Being able to take pictures on the outside, I managed to photograph several doors and gates for today’s Thursday Doors challenge!

For a fee, one can take a horse and carriage ride. I was intrigued by the horses’ “hats”!
Schönbrunn Palace and its gardens were recognized by the UNESCO World Heritage Foundation in 1996 as a remarkable Baroque estate. Many beautiful white marble statues flank its gardens; I posted a few of these a couple of weeks ago for Sculpture Saturday.

Wait…this guy isn’t a real statue, although he remains motionless until you get close! Perhaps he can sing a few bars of a Mozart symphony!

In spite of the summer crowds and the heat of the day, I enjoyed our visit to this former summer home of the Habsburgs. Here’s a vase of flowers for Cee’s FOTD 2/13/20.

Historical information from my personal notes and Wikipedia: Schönbrunn Palace.