Skip-the-line available The History of Schönbrunn Palace
From a Habsburg hunting ground to Maria Theresa's golden court, Napoleon's headquarters, and the world of Franz Joseph and Sisi — the story of Vienna's imperial summer palace.
Schönbrunn Palace grew from a Habsburg hunting estate into the summer residence and symbolic heart of one of Europe's great dynasties. It took its golden form under Empress Maria Theresa in the mid-18th century, hosted the six-year-old Mozart in 1762, served as Napoleon's Vienna headquarters, and became the birthplace and deathbed of Emperor Franz Joseph, whose wife Elisabeth — 'Sisi' — remains one of Europe's most storied figures. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996, it is one of the best-preserved Baroque palace-and-garden ensembles in the world. This guide traces that history from the first hunting lodge to the end of the monarchy.
How did Schönbrunn begin?
Schönbrunn began as a Habsburg hunting ground on the wooded western edge of Vienna, and the estate's name — 'schöner Brunnen', or 'beautiful spring' — is traditionally traced to a spring said to have been found there by Emperor Matthias in the early 1600s. An earlier palace on the site was badly damaged during the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. In its aftermath, Emperor Leopold I commissioned the great Baroque architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach to design a grand new imperial residence, and building began around the turn of the 18th century, in the district now known as Hietzing. This early Fischer von Erlach phase established Schönbrunn as a serious imperial project rather than a mere hunting seat, setting the footprint and ambition that Empress Maria Theresa would later transform into the palace of forty state rooms that visitors walk through today on the Grand Tour.
The palace that defines Schönbrunn today, however, is largely the work of the mid-18th century. When Maria Theresa inherited the Habsburg lands in 1740, she took Schönbrunn as her favourite residence and ordered a comprehensive rebuilding, entrusted largely to the court architect Nikolaus Pacassi and carried out over the following two decades until her long reign ended in 1780. The exterior gained its distinctive ochre-yellow render — a colour so bound up with the palace that it became known across Austria as 'Schönbrunn yellow' — and the interiors were remade in the Rococo taste of her court. Under Maria Theresa the building shifted decisively from a Baroque hunting palace to a working imperial home and the ceremonial stage of her reign, and it is that mid-century form which was ultimately preserved and inscribed by UNESCO on the World Heritage List in 1996.
What happened at Schönbrunn under Maria Theresa?
Under Empress Maria Theresa, who ruled the Habsburg domains from 1740 to 1780, Schönbrunn became the golden heart of the empire. She made it the family home for her enormous household — she had 16 children, among them the future Emperor Joseph II and Marie Antoinette, the youngest daughter who became queen of France — and the setting for the court's most important ceremonies, receptions and summer seasons. The palace's most opulent interiors, including the Great Gallery, the rosewood-panelled Millions Room and the East Asian Vieux-Laque Room, all date from her rebuilding, and the formal gardens, rising to the Gloriette she raised in 1775, took much of their present shape in her reign. It was Maria Theresa's taste, wealth and dynastic ambition, more than any other ruler's, that gave Schönbrunn the character and the forty-room Grand Tour interiors it still carries today.
The most famous single episode of her era came in 1762, when a six-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was brought to Schönbrunn to perform for the empress and her court in the Hall of Mirrors — a scene retold in countless biographies and central to the palace's identity as a cultural landmark of Vienna. Maria Theresa's Schönbrunn was a place of music, diplomacy and dynastic strategy, where marriages were arranged to bind the Habsburgs to the other courts of Europe, France among them through her daughter Marie Antoinette. Her long and stabilising reign from 1740 to 1780 turned the palace into the symbolic centre of a vast multinational empire, and the Rococo interiors she commissioned in the 1740s and 1750s remain the visual peak of the Grand Tour more than 250 years later, from the Great Gallery to the Millions Room.
Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna
Schönbrunn's grandeur made it a prize in the Napoleonic Wars. When French forces occupied Vienna, Napoleon Bonaparte used Schönbrunn as his headquarters — twice, in 1805 and again in 1809 — sleeping in the very palace that symbolised the rival Habsburg power he had defeated on the battlefield. The punitive Treaty of Schönbrunn of 1809, which stripped Austria of territory and population, was signed during that second occupation and takes its name from the palace. In a further twist of history, Napoleon's own son by his second wife, the Habsburg archduchess Marie Louise — the boy titled Duke of Reichstadt and known in legend as 'l'Aiglon', the Eaglet — later lived at Schönbrunn under Habsburg guardianship and died there of tuberculosis in 1832 at the age of 21, closing a strange circle between the two dynasties.
After Napoleon's final defeat, Vienna became the stage for the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815, the great diplomatic gathering that redrew the map of post-Napoleonic Europe under the direction of the Austrian chancellor Metternich. The Habsburg court, with Schönbrunn among its residences, hosted a season of receptions and balls so lavish that the Congress was famously said to 'dance' rather than negotiate. While the formal talks centred on the Hofburg, the Habsburgs' winter palace in the city, Schönbrunn's halls belonged to the same imperial world of spectacle and diplomacy that entertained the assembled monarchs and envoys under Maria Theresa's ochre-yellow roofs. These early-19th-century episodes cemented the palace's place not just in Austrian history but in the wider story of modern Europe, layering political drama onto a building already defined by the Baroque splendour of the previous century.
Franz Joseph, Sisi and the long imperial sunset
The palace's most famous residents belong to the 19th century. Emperor Franz Joseph I was born at Schönbrunn in 1830 and reigned for 68 years, from 1848 until his death — one of the longest reigns in European history and the long twilight of the Habsburg monarchy. He used Schönbrunn as his principal summer residence throughout that reign, keeping a famously spartan personal routine of early rising and plain living amid the palace's splendour, and he died in his apartments here in 1916 at the age of 86, in the middle of the First World War. His preserved rooms, business-like and almost austere beside the gilded state halls that Maria Theresa built, are a centrepiece of both the 22-room Imperial and the 40-room Grand tours, and they anchor the palace's story in the era most visitors know best.
His wife, Empress Elisabeth of Austria — universally known as 'Sisi' — is the palace's other great 19th-century figure. Bavarian-born and married to Franz Joseph in 1854 at just 16, celebrated across Europe for her beauty and famously uneasy in the rigid Habsburg court, Sisi has become one of the continent's most mythologised royals, her restless life retold in films, museums and endless popular history. Her rooms at Schönbrunn, seen alongside the dedicated Sisi Museum in Vienna's Hofburg, the Habsburgs' winter palace in the centre, give the fullest picture of a solitary, tragic figure who was assassinated by an anarchist in Geneva in 1898. Together, Franz Joseph and Sisi turned Schönbrunn into the emotional heart of the imperial story's final chapter, and their world is the one the palace most vividly preserves for today's visitors on the Grand Tour.
The end of empire and World Heritage status
The Habsburg era ended at Schönbrunn. In November 1918, in the aftermath of the First World War, the last emperor, Charles I, signed a declaration at Schönbrunn renouncing participation in the affairs of state, and the six-centuries-old Habsburg monarchy gave way to the new Republic of Austria within days. After generations as an imperial residence — the birthplace and deathbed of Franz Joseph, who died here in 1916 — the palace passed into the ownership of the young republic, which chose to open its state rooms to the public rather than let them stand empty. Today Schönbrunn is run as a museum and the most visited sight in Austria, welcoming several million visitors a year while preserving the interiors, the apartments and the gardens largely as the imperial family knew them at the monarchy's end.
In 1996, UNESCO inscribed the Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn on the World Heritage List, recognising the ensemble as an outstanding example of a Baroque princely residence and a remarkably complete synthesis of architecture, interior decoration and formal landscape design. The listing covers not just the palace but the whole designed estate — the gardens, the Great Parterre, the Gloriette of 1775, the fountains, the Palm House and the historic Tiergarten zoo founded in 1752 — that Maria Theresa and her successors shaped over two centuries. That World Heritage status is why Schönbrunn is conserved so carefully and why 15-minute timed entry protects the interiors: it is not simply a grand building but a rare, intact record of the Habsburg world at its height, and one of the best-preserved Baroque palaces in Europe, a symbol of Habsburg power.
Frequently asked
Who built Schönbrunn Palace?
An early Baroque palace was designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach around 1700 for Emperor Leopold I. The palace seen today largely dates from Empress Maria Theresa's mid-18th-century rebuilding under architect Nikolaus Pacassi, when it gained its 'Schönbrunn yellow' facade.
Why is Schönbrunn Palace famous?
It was the Habsburgs' summer residence and a symbol of imperial power for centuries. Emperor Franz Joseph was born and died here, his wife Sisi lived here, the young Mozart played here in 1762, and it is one of Europe's best-preserved Baroque palaces — UNESCO-listed since 1996.
When did Mozart play at Schönbrunn?
In 1762, when the six-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart performed for Empress Maria Theresa and her court in the Hall of Mirrors — one of the most famous episodes in the palace's history.
Did Napoleon stay at Schönbrunn?
Yes. Napoleon used Schönbrunn as his Vienna headquarters during the French occupations of 1805 and 1809, and the 1809 Treaty of Schönbrunn is named for it. His son later lived and died at the palace in 1832.
Who were Franz Joseph and Sisi?
Emperor Franz Joseph I reigned for 68 years (1848–1916) and was both born and died at Schönbrunn. His wife, Empress Elisabeth ('Sisi'), was a celebrated and much-mythologised figure; she was assassinated in 1898. Their apartments are central to the palace tour.
When was Schönbrunn made a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
In 1996. UNESCO inscribed the Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn as an outstanding Baroque princely residence, covering the palace, gardens, Gloriette, fountains, Palm House and historic zoo as a complete designed landscape.
How old is Schönbrunn Palace?
An early Baroque palace was begun around 1700, but the palace visitors see today dates mainly from Maria Theresa's rebuilding in the mid-18th century — roughly 280 years old, on a site used by the Habsburgs since the 1600s.
What does the name Schönbrunn mean?
Schönbrunn means 'beautiful spring' (schöner Brunnen) in German, traditionally traced to a spring said to have been found on the estate by Emperor Matthias in the early 1600s.