Hofburg

Palace · Innere Stadt (1st)Vienna, Austria

The Hofburg grew over six centuries into one connected complex. Each ruler added a wing instead of replacing what already stood, so a thirteenth-century core sits against Renaissance and Baroque wings and finally the Neue Burg, a vast curved block begun in the 1880s and finished in 1913. That block was designed as one half of a grand forum whose second half was never built. Altogether the Hofburg runs to eighteen wings and nineteen courtyards, and it is still in daily use: the Austrian president works here, and so do a library, a riding school and several museums. Three sets of interiors are open to visitors. The imperial apartments hold the rooms where Franz Joseph slept on an iron camp bed and was woken at half past three each morning. The Sisi Museum spends most of its space taking apart the romantic legend of Empress Elisabeth rather than selling it. The treasury holds the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and a narwhal tusk that was catalogued for centuries as a unicorn's horn. Outside, the ground opens onto Heldenplatz, the square where the country's twentieth-century crowds assembled.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Walk through it rather than around — Michaelerplatz to In der Burg and out under the Leopoldine Wing onto Heldenplatz takes ten minutes and shows the six centuries in sequence.
The Sisi Museum argues with its own subject — it is built to take apart the sentimental version of Elisabeth, which makes it far more interesting than the postcards outside suggest.
Morning training beats the gala — the Lipizzaner stallions work in the Baroque hall on published training days, and it is the same horses in the same room.
Look at the newest wing and note what is missing — the Neue Burg was designed as half of a pair of curved wings framing the square; the other half was never built.

Things to do

1
Cross the whole complex on foot
Go in under the dome at Michaelerplatz, through the passage into the In der Burg courtyard, then out through the passage under the Leopoldine Wing onto Heldenplatz, facing the curved front of the Neue Burg. You pass from the medieval core to the last gasp of the empire in about ten minutes, and nobody checks a ticket.
2
Watch the horses work
The Spanish Riding School trains its Lipizzaner stallions in a white Baroque hall with a chandeliered ceiling. The training sessions are practice rather than performance — riders in ordinary clothes, horses stopping and repeating things — and they run on published days rather than every morning.
3
Go and look at the crown
The treasury opens off the Schweizerhof, the oldest courtyard in the complex. The imperial crown is not a circle but an octagon of eight hinged gold plates set with unpolished stones, made in the tenth century to sit over a fabric cap, and it looks handmade in a way no photograph of it manages. A few cases along, the unicorn's horn turns out to be two and a half metres of narwhal tusk in a gold mount.