Schönbrunn PalaceThe yellow façade in the pool

An axis that climbs to the hillside

Hietzing, Vienna, Austria — Habsburg summer palace and gardens.

First, take in that pool.

The yellow façade runs horizontally, windows densely ranked, the central stretch stepping slightly forward, the roof pressed flat. The courtyard is spread with gravel, a fountain standing in the middle of the pool; from this end the house and its reflection each take half. Walk toward the wings and the wall suddenly narrows, potted palms set before the water, and the people thin out.

The garden rises due south along a straight line, the parterres laid out square and neat — up close you see only the bed at your feet. At the slope's end stands an open colonnade; climbing from below takes some effort, and looking back the whole yellow wall shrinks to a line. Inside and outside are two lights, separated only by that front gate.

From hunting ground to summer palace

When Maximilian II bought this riverside lowland in 1569, it was not yet a palace. He had it enclosed and stocked with pheasants, ducks, deer and wild boar for court hunting, dug fishponds, and set aside a small plot for turkeys and peacocks. The Katterburg manor house, built by the previous owner in 1548, stood nearby, and for a century after this remained hunting ground.

After Ferdinand II died, Eleonora Gonzaga took the land as a widow's residence and added a palace to the old house between 1638 and 1643. The name Schönbrunn first appears on an invoice from 1642. Even then it was only a country house with a garden outside the city, with no relation to the long axis that came later.

In the 1740s and 1750s Maria Theresa remade the estate into the Baroque summer palace of today, received as a wedding gift. Franz I then had the exterior redecorated in the Neoclassical style — the yellow wall we see now. When the monarchy ended in 1918 the palace passed to the new Austrian Republic and has been preserved as a museum ever since.

One thousand four hundred and forty-one rooms

Wikipedia records the Baroque palace as having 1,441 rooms. Visitors enter only a few chains of them; the rest serve their own purposes and you will not pass through one by one. The lacquer room's panelling runs deep with inlaid pictures, a few pieces of furniture on the wood floor, light coming only from the windows on one side.

Franz Joseph was born in this house and died here too, on 21 November 1916, aged eighty-six. Most of the furnishings kept are arranged as they were in his century — the tablecloths, chair covers and which picture hangs where belong to a particular year's setting. When you see the house, it is enough to note the beams, parquet and window positions; the furnishings change.

Out of the rooms and back to the courtyard, the space suddenly opens. The fountain stands in the middle, and only when the wind dies do the two rows of windows line up. This is the spot to look back — the scale indoors and that wall outside are simply not the same thing.

The axis climbs a 60-metre hill

In 1695 Jean Trehet, a pupil of André Le Nôtre, planned the French garden here. The carved flowerbed between palace and Neptune Fountain is called the Great Parterre, and the paths run south from it, rising all the way. The parterre pattern cannot be taken in up close — you see how the green plots are clipped into symmetry only from a palace window above.

The garden's axis points to a 60-metre hill, crowned since 1775 by the Gloriette. Built from stone salvaged from demolished buildings, it was meant to speak of Habsburg power and the 'just war'. Its colonnade opens on one side, and from beneath it you can see the whole axis receding.

In 1996 the palace and gardens together were listed as a World Heritage Site, recognised for the Baroque whole and the union of the arts. The still pool by the side wing sits at the edge of the courtyard, potted palms before the water — a good place to rest when tired. The hillside is windy; wear comfortable shoes.