I. General outline Schönbrunn Palace together with its ancillary buildings and extensive park is by virtue of its long and colourful history one of the most important cultural monuments in Austria. Scheduled as a listed monument, the whole ensemble, including the palace, the park with its numerous architectural features, fountains and statues and not least the zoo – the oldest of its kind in the world – was placed on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List in 1996. In the possession of the Habsburg dynasty since Maximilian II, the palace passed to the ownership of the Republic of Austria at the end of the monarchy in 1918 and was subsequently administered by the Schlosshauptmannschaft Schönbrunn. In 1992 the Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H. (SKB) was founded and entrusted with the administration of the palace as a modern, limited-liability company. The duties of the SKB include the exploitation of its many resources in fulfilling its role as a cultural and touristic amenity as well as the obligation to conserve and revitalise this unique historical and art-historical gem. As its primary duties, preservation and restoration have to be financed by the SKB from its own resources without recourse to state subsidies.

I visited Schonbrunn and easily could have spent the entire day in the Imperial Apartments and other attractions on the palace grounds, but sadly only had a few hours here. The apartments are amazing, with decorations and furniture, artwork, etc far superior to those availabe for viewing in any other palace I've ever visited. An audioguide was quite helpful, and even though I listened to the audioguide in every single room, it only took about an hour to tour the apartments. The Gloriette sits high upon the hill behind and gives fabulous photos of both the palace and the city beyond, which was definitely worth the hike up the hill. The Roman Ruins, off in the gardens to the left of the Gloriette, are particularly beautiful. The only thing I would caution against is visiting on a weekend, as it can be extremely crowded and very difficult to move around, etc, and the lines can be horribly long for the bathroom and tickets.

Schönbrunn Palace is where the Imperial family, The Habsburgs used to live. It was built in 1642 in the Baroque Style. It was modeled after Versailles with its gardens and mirror room. The Empress Maria Theresa used to live there with her 16 children, including Marie Antoinette of France. You’ll go around the palace and see the luxurious furniture, the walls decorated in gold, crystal chandeliers and ceramics heater. There are wonderful paintings that depict the family life. At night we attended a concert at the Orangery, one of the rooms of the palace where Mozart himself once played. The Shonbrunn Palace Orchestra was accompanied by a soprano and a ballet couple. It was awesome.

Visiting the palace first I thought wow, this is awesome, my first palace, I was only 18 then, on a youth choir tour of Austria and Hungary. But then to walk out to the gardens.....massive gardens - Wow. It was a beautiful sunny day, we had a camera crew from South Africa with us, as we where the first South African Choir in decades to take part in the Choir competitions in Vienna and Debrecen. the view from the top was just amazing, we actually shot one of our African songs, with the gardens and the Palace in the background - it feels like yesterday! Great place and worth the visit!

Schonbrunn is in a way as impressive as Versailles and at the same time a lot more cosy. You can see that it's main founder was a woman with a large family (queen Maria Theresia) rather then a pompous attention-seeker ( Louis XIV). The castle, to me, is also and will always be connected to Sissi... So ofcourse I jumped at the chance of having a concerto in the late empresses private rooms. It was overwhelming, with rather a small audience, top-rate singers of the Vienna Opera, and during break a glass of wine in the otherwise deserted park. Made me feel as if time had been turned back 100 years!