Schonbrunn Palace is aprevious imperial summer residence in Vienna, Austria. One of the most vital cultural monuments in the country, since the 1960s it’s been one of the major visitor attractions in Vienna. The palace and gardens illustrate the tastes, interests, and aspirations of successive Habsburg sovereigns.

In the year 1569, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II bought a large floodplain of the Wien brook beneath a hill, situated between Meidling and Hietzing, where aprevious owner, in 1548, had erected a big house called Katterburg. The emperor ordered the area to be fenced and put game there like pheasants, ducks, deer and wild pig, to serve as the court’s recreational hunting ground. In a tiny separate part of the area,’exotic’ birds like turkeys and peafowl were kept. Fishponds were built, too.

The name Schnbrunn ( meaning’beautiful spring’ ), has its roots in an artesian well from which water was consumed by the court.
during the next century, the area was employed as a hunting and recreation ground. Especially Eleonore Gonzaga, who loved hunting, spent much time there and was left the area as her widow’s residence after the passing of her husband, Ferdinand II. From 1638 to 1643, she added a palace to the Katterburg mansion, while in 1642 came the first mention of the name’Schnbrunn’ on an invoice. The origins of the Schnbrunn orangery seem to go back to Eleonore Gonzaga too.

Emperor Leopold I gave architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach the order to come up with a new palace. His first draft was a utopian one, dealing with different antique and modern ideals and making an attempt to top its inspiration Versailles. His second draft showed a smaller and more realistic building. Construction commenced in 1696 and after three years the first festivities were held in the newly built middle part of the palace.

Few parts of the first palace survived that century, because particularly Maria Theresa of Austria to whom the estate was made as a present by her pa ( who, himself, had shown but small interest in it ) had decided to make it the imperial summer residence, after she was crowned. She ordered her architect-of-the-court Nicol Pacassi to reshape the palace and garden in a way of the style of the Rococo time. At the end of the so-called Theresianian epoch, Schnbrunn Palace was a vigorous centre of Austria’s empire and the imperial family, and stayed their summer residence until the more-or-less’abdication’ of Charles I of Austria, in 1918.

In the 19th century one name is closely connected with Schnbrunn’s, Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria. He was born there, spent the bulk of his life there and died there on Nov twenty-one, 1916 in his sleeping room. Through the course of his 68-years reign, Schnbrunn Palace was viewed as a Gesamtkunstwerk ( total work of art ) and remodelled as agreed by its history.

The sculptured garden space between the palace and the Neptune Well ( viewn towards Gloriette, which is on top of the hill ) is named the Great Parterre (‘Great Ground Floor’ ). The French garden, a big part of the area, was planned by Jean Trehet in 1695. It contains, among others, a maze.

The complex however includes by much more attractions : Besides the Tiergarten, world’s oldest existing zoo ( founded in 1752 ), an orangerie erected around 1755, staple luxuries of European palaces of its type, a Palm house ( replacing, by 1882, around ten earlier and smaller glass houses in the western part of the park ) is noteworthy. Western parts were turned into English garden style in 1828-1852. At the outmost western edge, a botanical garden returning to an earlier nursery was re-arranged in 1828, when the Old Palm House was built. This one is currently being restored and partly will be house a modern enclosure for Orang-Utans, besides an eaterie and office rooms. It’s going to be re-opened in 2009.

If you’d like to visit Schönbrunn Palace look for Appartamenti Vienna. From Appartamenti a Vienna you can reach all sights in Vienna easily.

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