The Hofburg has no single front door. It's a block of 19 courtyards with gates on every side, and the museums inside each have their own entrance, ticket desk and opening days. The most common mistake is to queue at the wrong one.
The Hofburg isn't a palace in the way Schönbrunn or Versailles is. Nobody designed it. It grew, wing by wing, for more than six hundred years, each…
Most visitors to the Neue Burg come for the Weltmuseum and walk past the stairs to the Imperial Armoury. That's a mistake. Upstairs is one of the…
For about three hundred years, when a Habsburg baby was christened, the water came out of this ewer and fell into this basin. Together they weigh…
Most crowns are made for a coronation. This one never saw one. Rudolf II had it made in Prague in 1602 to wear when the real imperial crown was out…
If you see one thing in the Hofburg, make it the Treasury. It's small, about twenty rooms, and it holds the objects that made a Habsburg an emperor…
Vienna's Hofburg gets the crowds, but the Habsburgs had a second Hofburg in Innsbruck, and it holds one of the saddest stories in the family. It's…
Among the crowns and regalia of the Imperial Treasury stand two small vases of flowers that will never wilt. Every petal is gold, enamel or a cut…
Josefsplatz is one of the most complete Baroque squares in Vienna: the white front of the court library on one side, palace wings on two more, and in…
When Austria swears in a new government, the ceremony takes place in a Rococo room in the Hofburg called the Maria Theresa Room. It was once the…
