Story
The story of Schönbrunn Palace
The name Schönbrunn means "beautiful spring", after an artesian well whose water was drunk by the imperial court. In 1569 Emperor Maximilian II bought this floodplain of the Wien river and turned it into a hunting ground stocked with pheasants, ducks, deer and boar, while turkeys and peafowl were kept in a separate corner.
Eleonora Gonzaga, who loved hunting, added a palace between 1638 and 1643, and the name Schönbrunn first appeared on an invoice in 1642. The 1,441-room Baroque palace you see today took shape in the 1740–1750s under Empress Maria Theresa, who had received the estate as a wedding gift. Franz Joseph was born here and died here in 1916, at the age of 86. In 1961 Kennedy and Khrushchev met here.
Stroll the Great Parterre toward the Neptune Fountain: this French garden was planned in 1695 by Jean Trehet.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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