On an early morning late this past June, we popped over to Schönbrunn Palace to explore the grounds and gardens while staying for some days in Vienna.
Schönbrunn was the Hapsburg’s summer residence: a large, yellow Baroque palace surrounded by extensive gardens. The area was originally the hunting grounds of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II from the mid-1500s but was then designed as a formal French garden in 1695, with the Neptune fountain added by Empress Maria Theresa almost a hundred years later. The palace as we know it today was built in the mid-1700s during Maria Theresa’s reign with its exterior redecorated in the Baroque style by Franz I, the first Emperor of Austria, in the early 1800s.
These were the hottest days of our whole “European Pretzel” so we only lasted about an hour before calling it quits. Here are some shots taken of the exterior of Schönbrunn Palace as well as some details of the gardens and grounds one morning this past summer.
