Liechtenstein City Palace

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Liechtenstein City Palace diagonally behind the Burgtheater : Bankgasse with the main entrance on the left , Löwelstrasse on the right, which borders the Volksgarten
Liechtenstein City Palace, painting from 1903
Grand staircase in the city palace

The Stadtpalais Liechtenstein is a palace in the 1st district of Vienna , Inner City , not far from the imperial Hofburg . It is the Majorate House of the Princes of Liechtenstein and is still owned by the Princely House of Liechtenstein . The building is considered to be the first significant high baroque building in Vienna.

The palace was extensively restored and opened on April 9, 2013 by Prince Hans Adam II in the presence of Federal President Heinz Fischer . It is furnished with works of art from the Princely Collections and has been available every second Friday since May 2013 for guided tours and for use in (rented) events.

location

The main entrance to the palace is diagonally across from the south wing of the new Burgtheater building , which opened in 1888 , at Bankgasse 9 at the corner of Löwelstraße 10 (no entrance there). Bankgasse was called Vordere Schenkenstrasse until 1862 ; its current name reminds us that at the other end of the street from 1821–1860 the seat of the Austrian National Bank was located. Further fronts of the building block are at Abraham-a-Sancta-Clara-Gasse 1 (side street of Bankgasse) and at the adjoining address Minoritenplatz 4 (ministries adjacent). On the south side, the palace is directly adjacent to buildings in the vicinity of the Federal Chancellery .

From the windows of the eastern front of the palace on Löwelstrasse , which was first mentioned in 1786 , one could look over the city ​​wall around the old town, which was then torn down in this section, until around 1861–1863 . The glacis behind it , through which one could see the suburb of Josefstadt , which was incorporated in 1850 , was partially blocked during the construction of Vienna's Ringstrasse . However, there was no construction directly in front of the palace, as the city wall had been relocated to the outside by 1821 and the Volksgarten , which was opened to the public in 1823, was laid out across from the Löwelstrasse front of the palace . Today from this front, in addition to the neighboring Burgtheater, the Vienna City Hall , the Parliament , the Natural History Museum and the Heroes' Square in front of the Hofburg, which adjoins the Volksgarten, can be seen.

History and design

The dance hall on the 2nd floor

Construction of the palace began in 1691 on behalf of Count Dominik Kaunitz under the direction of Domenico Martinelli and using plans by Enrico Zuccalli . The Viennese master Michael Khöll and the court master stonemason Ambrosius Ferrethi and his sons-in-law Giovanni Battista Passerini and Martin Trumler received stonemason orders from the imperial quarry .

Prince Johann Adam I von Liechtenstein bought the unfinished palace in 1694, designated it as a majorate house and had the construction completed by Gabriel de Gabrieli and Martinelli by 1705. On the side facing Bankgasse, Martinelli built Vienna's first monumental baroque portal. The side portal on Minoritenplatz and the staircase are associated with Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt . The sculptural fittings on the portals, on the attic and in the interior are by Giovanni Giuliani , the stucco by Santino Bussi . The main staircase from Kaiserstein was built in 1699 by the Viennese masters Michael Khöll and Wolfgang Steinböck , with the staircase coming from Kaisersteinbruch .

The Liechtenstein picture gallery was located on the 2nd floor until 1806. Then the palace was rented to the Archdukes Johann and Ludwig , and the works of art were brought to the garden palace in Rossau . The Russian embassy was later quartered in the city palace.

Prince Alois II wanted to use the palace himself again and had the inside of the house expanded by Peter Hubert Desvignes between 1836 and 1847 ; Carl Leistler was entrusted with the implementation , who enlisted Michael Thonet as one of several subcontractors . The cost of the new equipment should have been around eleven million guilders.

On behalf of the prince, technical devices were installed in the palace that caused a sensation. Among other things, there were doors that were mirrored on one side and that could be pulled up and turned , an elevator and a house intercom. The greatest amount of decoration and technical sophistication was used for the dance hall: It is surrounded by three corridors and can be enlarged around these rooms by pulling up the aforementioned doors, they are also rotatable and partly mirrored. The palace was popularly known as the Artists' Welfare Home because the renovation work by Desvignes took almost ten years.

The furnishing of the palace by Desvignes exceeded all expectations of Viennese Biedermeier and can therefore be assigned to the second rococo: elegant bentwood floors by Michael Thonet , flowery silk coverings and curtains from Viennese companies, supplemented by tons of Parisian chandeliers, shape the interior again after the restoration.

Princess Nora Fugger (1864–1945) described the palace in her biography:

When it comes to beauty and grandeur, the palace is unlikely to be equal in Europe. The ballroom is of enormous height. When the lights in the chandeliers on the walls, in the large girandoles and in the huge glass balloon, the chandelier above the center of the hall, were lit, the wonderful room must appear bathed in light. The ballroom is joined by two side rooms, which are separated from the hall by high glass walls. On the other side walls there are high mirrors, which construction makes a truly magical impression. In one of the salons there is a basin with a fountain in the middle of the room. Immediately before the outbreak of the revolution, Prince Liechtenstein gave the first ball in his magnificent palace. In 1851 - after the revolutionary years - again the first, the one described above.

The palace was also known for the important collection of paintings of the princes, whose most important baroque works have been presented in the Liechtenstein Garden Palace (until 2011, Liechtenstein Museum ) in Rossau in the 9th district.

In 1938 the princely family moved their residence from their castles in Moravia , Lower Austria and Vienna to the Principality of Liechtenstein in order to avoid contact with the Nazi regime as much as possible. The regime could not object to the fact that the princely art collection was moved to the principality during the war for security reasons, since the principality had been recognized as a sovereign state since 1806. The prince's property could therefore not be confiscated by the Nazi regime, since the German Reich did not wage war with Liechtenstein.

The City Palace was badly damaged in the Second World War by an aerial bomb and an airplane that fell on the building, as Prince Hans Adam II of Liechtenstein recalled at a press conference in January 2013 when he first visited the palace in 1953. In the 1950s it was only poorly repaired, the ceiling of the staircase was reconstructed in the 1970s based on old photographs.

Construction work 2009–2013

Photos of the palace from 2006 before the renovation was carried out.

Since 2009, under the planning of the Viennese architectural office Manfred Wehdorn, the general renovation of the palace has been carried out, with a three-story, 18-meter-deep underground storage facility for works of art being built under the inner courtyard. In the showrooms, Biedermeier art from the Princely Collections is to be presented on an area of ​​1,200 square meters. The opening as a museum was originally announced for December 1, 2011 and October 19, 2011 for spring 2012.

On November 15, 2011, the opening was postponed to spring 2013 and on November 16, it was announced that (as in the Liechtenstein Garden Palace ) the term Liechtenstein Museum will no longer be used and that regular museum operations will not be offered. The house will be open to visitors during the “Long Night of Museums”, group tours and (rented) events. The restoration, which was completed in 2013, was the first in many decades in which the historical building fabric and the historical technical installations were sustainably restored without pressure to save or time; according to the client from January 2013 by around 100 million euros. Since May 2013, the palace and the Biedermeier collection can be viewed on guided tours.

literature

  • Christian Witt-Dörring: A kind of revelation. The redesign of the interior of the Liechtenstein City Palace (1837–1848). In: Parnassus art magazine . Vienna, issue 11/1995, pp. 72–78.
  • Michael Huey: Peter Hubert Desvignes and the neo-rococo redesign of the Liechtenstein City Palace 1837–1849. Master thesis. University of Vienna , Vienna 1999.

Web links

Commons : Stadtpalais Liechtenstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helmuth Furch : Master Ambrosius Ferrethi, Heiligenkreuz subject and judge in quarry. In: Messages from the Kaisersteinbruch Museum and Culture Association . No. 38, 1995, pp. 12-48. ISBN 978-3-9504555-3-3 .
  2. ↑ Gerhard Robert Walter von Coeckelberghe-Dützele , Anton Köhler (ed.): Curiosities and Memorabilia Lexicon of Vienna: an instructive and entertaining reference and reading book in anecdotal, artistic, biographical, historical, legendary, picturesque, romantic u. topographical relationship. II. Volume. Realis, 1846, p. 151: Liechtenstein'sches Majoratshaus (in the front Schenkenstrasse). ( Online version on Google Books)
  3. ↑ a b Henriette Horny: We value every Fuzerl patina. Interview with Johann Kräftner , head of the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna. In: Courier. Vienna, January 4, 2009, p. 29.
  4. ↑ Alexandra Matzner: City Palace of the Prince von and zu Liechtenstein. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
  5. ↑ Princess Nora Fugger: In the splendor of the imperial era. Amalthea, Vienna 1932, p. 107 f.
  6. ↑ Liechtenstein City Palace shines again. In: The Standard. Vienna, January 24, 2013, p. 10, and website of the paper from January 23, 2013.
  7. ↑ Liechtenstein city palace as splendid museum. ORF Vienna, March 22, 2009.
  8. ↑ Michael Huber: Liechtenstein Museum: The Prince went into the depths. In: Courier . Vienna, March 12, 2011, p. 34.
  9. ↑ Liechtenstein city palace as splendid museum. ORF website, October 19, 2011.
  10. ^ Off for museum operations in the Palais. ORF website, November 15, 2011.
  11. ↑ Olga Kronsteiner: From museum to party location. Website of Der Standard . Vienna, November 16, 2011.

Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 35.6 ″  N , 16 ° 21 ′ 45.2 ″  E