My Winter Home: Hofburg Palace

Last Thursday, I finally visited one of my most highly-anticipated destinations: the Hofburg Palace. The Hofburg was the winter home of the Hapsburg family, most recently the last Holy Roman Emperor Franz Josef and his wife Elizabeth, affectionately known as Sissi, and quite possibly the most beloved figure in Austrian history (I’d say she rivals Mozart for that role). You all known how I feel about palaces, so needless to say, I’ve been incredibly excited to go there since I heard I was going to be living near Vienna this year. My ticket came with a free, helpful, and very well-done audio guide, and I listened to every single one of the 75 tracks on it. I’m REALLY into Hapsburg history, people. The combination of the guide and the ever-informative Rick Steves guided tour made for an amazing learning experience. I wont share everything I learned, just the extra cool or interesting stuff. 

Main entrance to the palace. It's not like its huge or beautiful or intimidating or anything...

 The first part of the tour was the Silberkammer, or the Silver Treasury. Basically this was a series of rooms full of the Habsburg porcelain, silver, and gold tableware. Never in my life did I think I would enjoy walking through 10 rooms of plates and forks but I TOTALLY DID. The audioguide made it super interesting and the decadence of this tableware was really incredible. It was the perfect intro to the Hapsburg lifestyle. This was also the only part of the palace that allowed pictures, so this blog will be top heavy on the pictures. Some of the coolest things I learned:

The set of silverware above is one of the original sets owned by true life Hapsburg monarchs, but it is STILL USED TODAY AT STATE DINNERS. How cool is that? Imagine eating soup out of a spoon that was USED AND OWNED BY HAPSBURGS or whatever other foreign monarch was being entertained at the palace. So cool.

Until the 19^th century, porcelain was viewed as inadequate for tableware and was therefore only used for dessert, because dessert dishes didn’t need to be as fancy. Silver (or gold plated other stuff) was used for the rest of the meal. However, this began to change when, during the Napoleonic Wars, most of the silver in the Holy Roman Empire was melted down to use for money. Not wanting to give themselves special treatment, the Hapsburgs also melted down a lot of their silverware (not just utensils, but places, serving dishes, etc), meaning more porcelain was used, and sadly little of the older Habsburg silverware remains today. How utilitarian of them.

This is my favorite fun fact: the Hapsburgs had their own technique of napkin folding, which was only allowed to be used when the Emperor was dining. The method of folding the napkin is a tightly kept secret to this day. Only 2 people know how to do it and it is still only used when a “crowned head” is dining. Pretty cool and exclusive, if you ask me.

There's a cute little space for the rolls! So inventive!!

The next part of the tour was the Sissi Museum. As I mentioned before, Sissi is a hugely beloved character, so lots of interesting myths have sprung up concerning her life. The goal of the museum is to debunk these myths and paint a more accurate picture of her and her very tragic and misunderstood life. In short, Sissi was born to a royal family in Bavaria, but married future emperor Franz Josef when he was 23 and she 16. They were first cousins (jokes about Hapsburg inbreeding are not just clichés) and met at FJ’s 23^rd birthday. He fell instantly in love with her even though he was already betrothed to someone else. She said, of FJ, “I like the emperor, if only he wasn’t the emperor.” They married and moved to Vienna, and thus began Sissi’s downward spiral. She absolutely hated public life and being the object of the public’s scrutiny. She was apparently known as the most beautiful woman of her time, and she felt pressured by that image, causing her to engage in strange diets and experiment with various beauty regiments to maintain her appearance. She felt trapped and chained, which led her to adopt certain interests to escape. She was an award-winning horsewoman, incredible poet, and she travelled a lot, essentially running from her problems. When her only son (and heir) Rudolf committed suicide she lost it. She wore black the rest of her life, and never escaped the mourning. She was seriously depressed. 

FJ and Sissi, in the dress she wore for her inauguration

Sissi post-Rudolf's death

To make things more tragic, she was assassinated by an Italian anti-monarchist who had nothing against Sissi but rather needed a monarch to kill to bring attention to his cause. Because Sissi was in Geneva when he planned his attack and his intended target (a random Italian Prince) was not, she was the victim. Basically I find Sissi’s story to be incredibly tragic and absolutely fascinating. A few fun facts about Sissi: her hair was ankle-length and took 2-3 hours to style each day, and an entire day to wash. Her waist was 20 inches and she was obsessed with exercise and strange diets but also really really loved ice cream. One exhibit case had letters and diary entries from friends about how much ice cream she ate as well as receipts from pastry shops. A woman after my own heart.

The final part of the tour was the Imperial Apartments. Here I learned more about Franz Josef, who was also a very interesting character. He was apparently universally beloved by his people, even though he was a terrible military man, and is sometimes blamed for helping to start WW1. Oops. He took his “job” as “chief executor of the empire” very seriously and loved paperwork and bureaucracy (weirdo). He held an audience twice/week, during which any and every citizen of the empire could come speak with him, no matter how poor. And although he had minimal furniture in his room and slept on a very unflashy, small bed, he did have 14 personal servants so I can’t say he lived too modestly. In general the furniture in the apartments wasn’t super impressive but the rooms themselves were gorgeous, decorated in the Baroque/Rococo style that is expected of European royalty from the time period of FJ and Sissi (I would love to see what it looked like in the earlier times—some parts of the palace date back to the 13^th century). My favorite part was the set of hallways that had very detailed and imaginative tropical murals painted on the walls!

All in all, the Hofburg was awesome. It was definitely more informative than fantasy-indulging (like I was expecting), but it was a super super interesting kind of informative. And, because FJ and Sissi are very important to Austrian history, I’m glad I’m more aware. I find their story quite intriguing. Also, my ticket gets me into the inside of Schönbrunn which I think should definitely fulfill my Princess-fantasy requirements. So we all have that to look forward to. Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something!!