Originally intended by Emperor Franz I to be a menagerie in Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace Park, the oldest zoo in Europe opened in the summer of 1752 after only one year of construction. At first, the menagerie was reserved exclusively for the imperial family, and it wasn\u2019t until 1778 \u2013 at least on Sundays \u2013 that the public could also visit the zoo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Around 1800, the zoo already offered amazing attractions like an elephant, wolves, bears, polar bears, big cats, hyenas and kangaroos \u2014 the exotic animals turned out to be spectator magnets and soon the zoo was open daily to visitors. In 1828, the zoo acquired its first giraffe \u2013 a gift from the Viceroy of Egypt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the late 19th<\/sup> century, the zoo underwent a process of modernisation under Alois Kraus, the director of the zoo, and acquired its current look, making it one of the most beautiful and modern zoos in the world at the beginning of the 20th<\/sup> century. Since 1926, the former menagerie\u2019s official title is \u201ctiergarten,\u201d or zoo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tiergarten Sch\u00f6nbrunn is committed to the breeding and preservation of endangered animal species and is active in zoological, historical and veterinary research together with the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna and Vienna University\u2019s Department of Evolutionary Biology, which is part of its Faculty of Life Sciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The zoo, which attracts around two million visitors a year, currently covers an area of 17 hectares and houses 722 species with 8,409 individual animals. Tiergarten Sch\u00f6nbrunn is \u2013 together with the palace and the palace park \u2013 part of UNESCO\u2019s World Cultural Heritage Sch\u00f6nbrunn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Originally intended by Emperor Franz I to be a menagerie in Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace Park, the oldest zoo in Europe opened in the summer of 1752. At first, it was reserved for the imperial family, but since 1778 the public can visit too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}