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 outside it's a plain Gothic front squeezed between palace wings. It was the Habsburg court's parish church from 1634 to 1918, and it's…
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…
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…
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…
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…
