The horse is the reason everyone stops. It rears up so far that only its two hind hooves touch the pedestal, and nothing else holds it. When Anton Dominik Fernkorn unveiled it on Heldenplatz on 22 May 1860, it was hailed as the first monumental bronze statue anywhere supported…
A good part of the Imperial Armoury in the Neue Burg exists because of one man. Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol collected armour the way other princes…
Most visitors walk past it. The Augustinian Church is built into the Hofburg on Josefsplatz, next to the State Hall of the library, and from the…
Walk to the middle of the State Hall of the Austrian National Library and you're standing in front of the man who paid for it. Emperor Charles VI…
It's the size of a large fist, 10.9 centimetres tall. In the Treasury's jewels room it sits alone in a dark case, lit from above, and it glows. It is…
In the middle of the Hofburg's inner courtyard, In der Burg, an emperor in Roman dress stands on a tall pillar with his right arm stretched out over…
Most of the Order of the Golden Fleece's treasure is about the knights. This piece belonged to the man who kept track of them. It's the potence, the…
Late Gothic armour is the armour people picture when they think of a knight: slim, pointed, ridged like folded cloth, the steel following the line of…
Heldenplatz is the big open square on the Ring side of the Hofburg: lawns, two bronze horsemen, the curved front of the Neue Burg, and a long view…
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…
Most of the Imperial Treasury is about power that lasted centuries. One case is about an empire that lasted three years. It holds the chains of two…
Most people on Josefsplatz look at the bronze emperor on his horse, then at the doors of the State Hall, and go in. Very few look up. They should. On…
Walk into the courtyard In der Burg and turn towards the oldest part of the palace, and you're looking at the most photographed doorway in the…
In one long, marbled hall of the Imperial Armoury, knights sit on armoured horses in full tournament dress, plumes on their helmets and painted…
