Danube River Cruise #33: Schonbrunn Palace Part 4: Ghost of Napoleon Room

In this 33rd blog about the Viking River Cruise on the Danube, we are still in Austria, and the Schonbrunn Palace where you will now meet the 4th ghosts we encountered. The Ghost of Napoleon Room !

Napolean Room

THE NAPOLEON ROOM - This room has quite a history. French Emperor Napoleon had visited the Schonbrunn Palace and stayed there. He later offered his daughter, Maria Louise's hand in marriage to one of the Habsburg men after he conquered the territory. So, in 1810, Maria Louise married into the Habsburg family.

ABOUT THE NAPOLEON ROOM - Today known as the Napoleon Room, this was previously the bedroom shared by Franz Stephan and Maria Theresa from 1746. During the nineteenth century it was refurbished several times, as revealed by restoration work carried out in 2007.

 FLASH FORWARD - Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1850.

THE GHOST - As I walked in the Napoleon Room, I experienced a very heavy feeling pressing down on my chest. There was also a dull pain in my chest, as if it were difficult to breathe.

Napoleon II, Portrait by Moritz Daffinger

WHO IS THE GHOST? I learned the Napoleon's son stayed in Vienna, and this was his room. He contracted tuberculosis and died in that very room at age 21. The bed he died on still remains in that room today and there is a marble sculpture of him . Napoleon's son continues to haunt the very room he stayed in during his visits, and the room in which he died.

ABOUT NAPOLEON II- Napoléon François Charles Joseph Bonaparte (20 March 1811 – 22 July 1832), Prince Imperial, King of Rome, known in the Austrian court as Franz from 1814 onward, Duke of Reichstadt from 1818, was the son of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, and his second wife, Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria. In 1832, he caught pneumonia and was bedridden for several months. His poor health eventually overtook him and on 22 July 1832 Franz died of tuberculosis at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna.[8] He left no issue; thus the Napoleonic claim to the throne of France passed to his cousin, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who later successfully restored the empire as Napoleon III.

WEIRD FACT- Some of Napoleon II's organs REMAIN in the Schonbrunn Palace. The rest of his remains were transferred to Paris, but his heart and intestines remained in Schonbrunn, which is traditional for members of the Habsburg house. They are in Urn 42 in the "Heart Crypt" (Herzgruft) and his viscera are in Urn 76 of the Ducal Crypt.
**THAT'S why he's here. He wants all of his remains put in the same place next to his father's remains.""

NEXT: TO KREBS, AUSTRIA