Schönbrunn Palace

Visit Schönbrunn Palace, the No. 1 sight in Vienna!

At the end of the seventeenth century Emperor Leopold I commissioned the Baroque architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, who had received his training in Rome, to design an imperial hunting lodge for his son, Crown Prince Joseph, later to become Emperor Joseph I. Replacing the château de plaisance built on this site for the dowager empress Eleonora of Gonzaga in 1642, it was to grow into a palatial imperial residence over the course of the eighteenth century.

Tour

Take a virtual tour! Besides the state rooms and private apartments of the imperial couple you´ll also see the precious 18th-century interiors from the time of Maria Theresia.

Take a tour

History

The history of Schönbrunn and the buildings that previously stood on this site dates back to the fourteenth century. Emperor Matthias discovered a spring that gave the estate the name it still bears today.

More history

Imperial summer residence

During the reign of Maria Theresa, as an imperial summer residence, Schönbrunn Palace became the glittering focus of court life. From this time on, it played host to the leading statesmen of Europe.

Google Arts & Culture

Discover the valuable equipment of Schönbrunn Palace at the Google Art Project Schönbrunn. Here you can look at paintings, objects and statues in high-resolution quality:

Google Arts & Culture Schönbrunn Palace

The palace is magnificent, the furniture befitting of a queen and in the best of taste. The gardens have everything that art has ever created.

Johann Edler von Kurzböck, 1779

Unesco-Logo-Ehrenhof Brunnen West

Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H. / Alexander Eugen Koller

UNESCO World Heritage Site

Schönbrunn Palace is one of Austria’s most important cultural assets, and since the 1960s has been one of Vienna’s major tourist attractions, drawing millions of visitors each year.

At the 20th session of the World Heritage Committee held in December 1996, Schönbrunn Palace was put on the list of UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites, an institution founded in 1972. Inclusion in this list confirms the importance of the palace and its gardens as a unique Baroque ensemble.

Who owns the palace?

In the possession of the Habsburg dynasty since Maximilian II, as former court property the palace passed to the ownership of the Republic of Austria at the end of the monarchy in 1918 and was administered by the Schlosshauptmannschaft Schönbrunn (a local government body) until 1992.

In 1992 Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H. was founded and entrusted with the administration of the palace as a limited-liability company solely owned by the Republic of Austria. The company’s corporate mission embraces the tasks of preservation, utilization and finance: the funding for the preservation of the historic fabric of the palace and garden monuments, together with the revitalization of the entire Schönbrunn complex, has to be generated from the company’s own resources without recourse to state subsidies.