It's finale time for the Vienna Series, and I have left the best sight of Vienna for the last part. Schönbrunn Palace is a former imperial 1,441-room summer residence in modern Vienna. It's one of the most important cultural monuments in the country, since the 1960s it has been one of the major tourist attractions. The palace and gardens illustrate the tastes, interests, and aspirations ofthe Habsburg monarchs.
This is a multi-part travel series. Other parts include
Part One: Museum Quarter and Hofburg Palace Part Two: Inner City and Horse carriages
Part Three: Graben, Stepahnsplatz and Metro
Part Four: Alpine Gardens
Part Five: Belvedere Castle
Part Six: Schönbrunn Palace
click on the images for a bigger view
This is the first sight that greets you, when you enter through the main gates. The sun was slowly setting as we approached our last destination for the day.
The name Schönbrunn (meaning "beautiful spring"), has its roots in an artesian well from which water was consumed by the court.
The garden axis points towards a 60-metre-high hill (200 ft), which since 1775 has been crowned by the Gloriette structure (Fischer von Erlach had initially planned to erect the main palace on the top of this hill).
The sculpted garden space between the palace and the Sun Fountain is called the Great Parterre. The French garden, a big part of the area, was planned by Jean Trehet, a disciple of André Le Nôtre, in 1695. It contains, among other things, a maze.
UNESCO catalogued Schönbrunn Palace on the World Heritage List in 1996, together with its gardens, as a remarkable Baroque ensemble and example of synthesis of the arts.
Following the downfall of the monarchy in 1918 the newly founded Austrian Republic became the owner of Schönbrunn Palace and preserved, as a museum, the rooms and chambers.
The main gardens, just like those in the Belvedere Castle were bare and totally different from what we saw in 2010 (click here to view some of these images)
I don't want to end on a grey note when it comes to the Schönbrun Palace, that's why I'll post the following image that was taking during our stay in Vienna in 2010. It shows the palace form the Gloriette hill, with the gardens and surrounding forest in full bloom.
In the end we went to the a upper-level metro station that took us back to our apartments, and the next morning we departed home to Mostar.
The End
Thank you all for watching and reading all of these parts. It has been a blast visiting Vienna, taking the photos, editing and researching. I hope you enjoyed the sights and stories from this magnificent place.
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