Lower Belvedere: Prince Eugene's Summer Palace
Why is it significant?
Walk through the gateway from Rennweg and you find yourself in a quiet courtyard in front of a long, low palace, only one storey high, with a raised central hall. It is surprisingly modest for the man who built it, one of the most famous soldiers in Europe.
Key Facts
| Place | Lower Belvedere: Prince Eugene's Summer Palace |
|---|---|
| Address | Rennweg 6, 1030 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.19670, 16.37910 |
| Part of Walk | Gold, Rebels and The Kiss: Vienna from the Secession to the Belvedere |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk through the gateway from Rennweg and you find yourself in a quiet courtyard in front of a long, low palace, only one storey high, with a raised central hall. It is surprisingly modest for the man who built it, one of the most famous soldiers in Europe.
Prince Eugene of Savoy was born in Paris in 1663, small, sickly and destined for the church. He asked Louis XIV for a commission in the French army and was turned down. So he rode to Vienna, arrived just as the Ottomans were besieging the city in 1683, and spent the next half century winning battles for the Habsburgs: Zenta, Blenheim, Belgrade. Louis XIV had made the worst personnel decision of his reign.
Eugene became immensely rich, and he spent it on art, books and buildings. Here Hildebrandt built him a summer palace between 1712 and 1716. Step inside and you will find the Marble Hall, where the ceiling celebrates the prince as a hero of the gods, and the Golden Cabinet, a small room lined with gilded panels and mirrors that multiply the light endlessly. The prince also kept a menagerie here, with exotic animals and birds, and an orangery, so oranges grew in a Viennese winter.
The Lower Belvedere also keeps a quiet treasure. The lead figures of Georg Raphael Donner's fountain on the Neuer Markt in the old town, made in the 1730s, are originals, and they are here... the ones in the city are copies. Empress Maria Theresa once wanted the naked figures taken down for being improper, and the story goes that they were saved only because the man sent to melt them refused.
Eugene never married and had no children. When he died in 1736 his niece inherited everything, sold the art, and in 1752 the Habsburgs bought the palace. Only then did people start calling it the Belvedere, the beautiful view. Now step back out to Rennweg and walk a little further east, to the church with the green dome behind a convent wall.