Six People at Most, and the Millions Room Named for What It Cost

Schloss, Wien

Meet the guide at the Schönbrunn Arrival Centre, Schönbrunner Schloßstrasse 50, in front of the Group Centre Building, across the street from the palace's main entrance. Be on time: the palace can refuse entry to latecomers.

Schonbrunner Gardens

The gardens first, where the Baroque idea of planting and architecture working as one thing is visible in the layout of the whole park. The Gloriette, the triumphal arch on the hill, looks out over the Vienna woods and was built for the military victories of Maria Theresa's reign, from 1740 to 1780, the high point of Habsburg power in Europe. In 1779 the park was opened to the general public and not only to the court, which tells you something about how she handled her subjects. Under her, Schönbrunn became the centre of imperial policy and of court life, and the summer residence of a family with sixteen children. Several of them did not reach adulthood, and the palace keeps the record of those childhoods, the summers, the illnesses and the early deaths.

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Schonbrunn Palace

Every generation of Habsburgs left something here. The Franz Joseph and Elisabeth apartments hold the story of a marriage made in 1854 between the emperor and a Bavarian princess who disliked the ceremonial and the ornament of the place. Room by room the scale of what Sisi was escaping becomes clear. The dining room has its tableware and the imperial napkins folded as a fleur de lys, and saw state dinner after state dinner. The Hall of Ceremonies has Martin van Meytens's scenes of Crown Prince Joseph's wedding. The Porcelain Room, Maria Theresa's study, is done entirely in imitation of china, with orientalist drawings by the imperial children. The Millions Room is named for what it cost in gold ducats: Indo-Persian miniatures in rococo frames, set into wall panels of carved rosewood from the Antilles, and one of the better meetings of Oriental and European decoration the Rococo produced.

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