No place screams monarchy like Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace. In 1742, Empress Maria Theresa chose it as her summer residence, and it was the primary residence of the Austrian Emperor from 1804 until the end of the First World War. It is the largest palace in Austria and one of the most significant and most visited cultural heritage sites in the country. The palace and the 160-hectare Baroque palace park that surrounds it have been on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List since 1996. The Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace complex also includes the oldest existing zoo in the world, Tiergarten Sch\u00f6nbrunn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the ground floor are the private apartments of the imperial family, known as the \u201cBergl Rooms,\u201d comprising the Gisela, Go\u00ebss and Crown Prince apartments. In the 19th<\/sup> century, Empress Elisabeth (\u201cSissi\u201d) named them after her children (Gisela of Austria and Crown Prince Rudolf), as well as her Mistress of the Robes, Countess von Go\u00ebss. Numerous frescoes by Johann Baptist Wenzel Bergl decorate the walls and ceilings of the apartments, which have been open to the public since 2008. Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace, which is often used for ceremonial purposes, is also home to the Mirrors Room, where six-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is reported to have given his first concert in front of Empress Maria Theresa and her court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the other attractions of Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace are the White-and-Gold Rooms; the \u201cBlue Staircase;\u201d the Billiard Room, decorated in Rococo stucco; the \u201cGreat Gallery,\u201d the more than 40-metre long hall was used by the imperial couple for formal receptions; the Hall of Ceremonies; the former Study of Emperor Franz I; the \u201cVieux Laque Room;\u201d the \u201cNapoleon Room,\u201d from the period of French occupation between 1805 and 1809; the Porcelain Room; the Millions Room; the Miniatures Room; the Gobelin Salon; the \u201cRed Salon\u201d and the Palace Theatre, which serves today as the rehearsal stage for the Max Reinhardt Seminar. Since 2002, the \u201cSch\u00f6nbrunn Children\u2019s Museum,\u201d in the west wing of the palace, offers young visitors the opportunity to learn about the imperial era by dressing up as \u201cimperial children\u201d and experiencing what everyday life was like for the imperial family during the Baroque period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace has also been the setting of several international films, including the three Sissi<\/em> films with Romy Schneider (1955), A Breath of Scandal<\/em> with Sophia Loren (1960), Armour of God<\/em> with Jackie Chan (1986), the James Bond film The Living Daylights<\/em> (1987) and the Hollywood epic Marie Antoinette<\/em> with Kirsten Dunst (2006). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sch\u00f6nbrunn gets its name from the \u201cfair spring\u201d \u2013 a well house built by the court gardener Adrian van Steckhoven. This spring supplied the drinking water for the imperial court and was transported to the Hofburg daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the end of the Second World War, the British occupying forces used Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace as their headquarters, since the neighbouring districts Vienna 12 (Meidling) and Vienna 13 (Hietzing) belonged to the British sector. In 1948, certain sections of the palace were reopened to the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even after the end of the monarchy in 1918, Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace continued to be the spectacular setting for state events: Austrian Federal President Adolf Sch\u00e4rf hosted a gala dinner in 1961 on the occasion of the summit meeting between US President J.F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev. The summit meeting was specifically held in Austria, which had been neutral since the State Treaty of 1955, with the intent of lowering tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union in the Cold War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fun fact: The famous yellow walls of Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace are not yellow by accident. \u201cSch\u00f6nbrunn yellow,\u201d also known as \u201cHabsburg yellow\u201d or \u201cimperial yellow,\u201d had been the colour of all official buildings in Austria-Hungary since around 1780 \u2013 upon the express order of Emperor Joseph II. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No place screams monarchy like Sch\u00f6nbrunn Palace. In 1742, Empress Maria Theresa chose it as her summer residence, and it was the primary residence of the Austrian Emperor from 1804 until the end of the First World War in 1918.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":206,"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\/413"}],"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=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotel-orangerie.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}