The Burggarten: Palm House and Mozart
Why is it significant?
Find the flowerbed in front of the white marble statue, the one planted in the shape of a treble clef, and you have found the Mozart monument. Behind you curves the glass and iron wall of the Palm House, and beyond the trees the traffic of the Ring rushes past, oddly muffled.
Key Facts
| Place | The Burggarten: Palm House and Mozart |
|---|---|
| Address | Burggarten, Burgring, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.20410, 16.36480 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna's Imperial Heart: The Hofburg, the Habsburg Crypt and Six Centuries of Empire |
| Generated | Generated |
Find the flowerbed in front of the white marble statue, the one planted in the shape of a treble clef, and you have found the Mozart monument. Behind you curves the glass and iron wall of the Palm House, and beyond the trees the traffic of the Ring rushes past, oddly muffled.
This garden exists because of Napoleon. When his army occupied Vienna in 1809, the French blew up part of the city bastions as they left, and the wreckage was cleared away. Instead of rebuilding the wall, Emperor Franz I took the space for himself and laid out a private garden. He was a passionate gardener, which his courtiers found faintly embarrassing in a monarch, and he liked to work with his own hands among the plants.
The Palm House is the garden's crown, a long Art Nouveau glasshouse built in the early twentieth century by the architect Friedrich Ohmann. In its time it was a winter refuge for the court's exotic plants; today one wing is full of tropical butterflies, flying free in the damp heat while snow falls on the Ring outside.
Mozart, meanwhile, is a newcomer. The statue by Viktor Tilgner was unveiled in 1896 on Albertinaplatz, where you just stood, and was damaged in the war. In 1953 it was restored and moved here, into the peace of the garden. Look at the reliefs around the base: scenes from Don Giovanni, and the child Mozart playing with his father and sister, the little prodigy who once, so the family story goes, jumped into the lap of Empress Maria Theresa and kissed her.
For a century only the imperial family and their guests could walk on these paths. The garden opened to everyone in 1919, after the monarchy fell, and the Viennese have been sprawling on the lawns ever since, something the old court would never have allowed. Now walk north through the garden gate towards the vast curved facade of the Neue Burg and out onto Heldenplatz.