Danube River Cruise #30: Vienna's Schönbrunn Palace part 1

Schönbrunn Palace

As we continue our tour of Vienna, Austria, we're going to take you to the famous Schönbrunn Palace in today's blog. In
an earlier blog (about our Viking River Cruise on the Danube) we talked about the Habsburg family who ruled Austria and the region for about 650 years. Well, The Schönbrunn Palace wound up as part of their properties. Read on!

WHAT IS THE SCHONBRUNN PALACE ? - Schönbrunn Palace was the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers, located in Hietzing, Vienna. According to Wikipedia, the 1,441-room Baroque palace is one of the most important architectural, cultural, and historic monuments in the country. Since the mid-1950s it has been a major tourist attraction.
It's located on Schönbrunner Schloßstraße 47, 1130 Wien, Austria. The Website is: https://www.schoenbrunn.at/en/

FAST FACTS:
1) It covers 186.28 hectares or 460 acres!
2) It's Baroque architecture
3) Architects: Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and Nicolò Pacassi

From a Hunting Lodge to a Palace

A WORLD HERITAGE SITE -UNESCO cataloged Schönbrunn Palace on the World Heritage List in 1996, together with its gardens, as a remarkable Baroque ensemble and example of synthesis of the arts.

WHEN WAS IT BUILT? - According to the Palace Website, 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.

WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE SCHONBRUNN? - The buildings that previously stood on this site dates back to the Middle Ages. From the beginning of the fourteenth century. It was called Katterburg and belonged to the manor of the abbey at Klosterneuburg. The estate boasted a corn-mill together with an plowable (planting) farm and vineyards. In 1569 the estate came into Habsburg possession through Maximilian II.
Schombrunn replaced the château de plaisance built on this site for the dowager empress Eleonora of Gonzaga in 1642. This site grew into a palatial imperial residence over the course of the eighteenth century.

Gardens behind the palace.

HOW DID IT GET ITS NAME? Emperor Matthias used the estate for hunting, and according to a legend is supposed to have come across the Schöner Brunnen (meaning ‘fair spring’), which eventually gave the estate its name, while out hunting in 1612.


NEXT: Rooms We Experienced Hauntings in Schonbrunn