Orangery (Vienna-Schönbrunn)
The orangery in the Schönbrunn palace gardens is the oldest of the four plant houses on the palace grounds in Vienna - Hietzing .
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history
The so-called “Katterburg” was a forerunner to Schönbrunn Palace. It has been converted into an ornamental garden. In 1573, for example, wood was requested in order to be able to build “fruit rooms”.
After the Turkish threat from Vienna had been averted, work on Schönbrunn Palace began under Emperor Leopold I. When the court moved into the palace built according to plans by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach in 1700 , the building did not yet have an orangery and the garden design was extremely poor.
To remedy this situation, Jean Trehet , a French gardener, was sent to Paris to inspect the palace gardens there and buy a thousand “taxis trees” ( yew trees ).
The garden plan subsequently drawn up by Trehet provided for an orange garden and there is also correspondence about the placement of bitter orange plants in winter. Why, of all places, Schönbrunn Palace did not have an orangery that was so fashionable in the Baroque period is unclear.
Under Maria Theresa , the main building of Schönbrunn Palace was redesigned by Nikolaus Pacassi . The gardens were redesigned by the Dutchman Adrian van Steckhoven and he also built glass houses in the western part of the complex in the area where the sundial house and the palm house are today .
Little is known about the construction of the orangery at Schönbrunn Palace. It is unclear which architect came up with the plans for the building, as both Jean Nicolas Jadot de Ville-Issey and Nikolaus Pacassi were working for the court at the time. On his departure from Vienna in 1753, Jadot left behind over 100 different plans, but Pacassi probably did not realize them, which is also supported by comparisons of styles. It must have been completed around 1754.
The structure extends over a length of 189 meters, with the upstream northern orangery parterre 68 meters wide and 4.7 meters high. The south side consists of 39 window axes (20 narrower and lower ones as well as 19 wider and higher ones that alternate with each other). The more than ten meters wide interior is spanned by a vault.
At the east end of the orangery, the semicircular cedar house connects seamlessly . It was built to protect the bitter orange garden from the cold east winds. The structure, which was probably built later, was probably used to grow tropical plants, as it was better suited for this and the smaller rooms were easier to air-condition and maintain.
The Schönbrunn orangery was heated by a hypocaust heater . The warm air from ten heating chambers was distributed through channels in the floor, which were covered with iron plates. The floor is made of bricks that store the heat. In winter temperatures between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius were reached.
For events during the cold season, the imperial festivals required additional heating. For this reason, Emperor Franz I introduced a different heating system in 1823, which, however, did not meet the requirements of the wintering plants, and so on December 3, 1839, court garden director Philipp Welle asked to reactivate the old heating system.
The importance of the orangery declined in the Biedermeier period . In the hall only the plants were overwintered, the orange parterre was used as a parking space and an orchard.
In the revolutionary year of 1848, the military moved into quarters in Schönbrunn and the orangery served as a horse stable. People showed less and less interest in the building and even considered demolition.
The orangery was saved by Emperor Franz Joseph I , who stopped the decline of the orangery.
Today it is looked after by the Federal Gardens , an office of the Ministry of Life. After a careful renovation in the 1980s, the orangery is now a popular venue. IMaGE Performing Arts GmbH has been the sole tenant of the facility since 1997. The Schönbrunn Palace Concerts take place here every evening and are particularly popular with guests from Asia. The orangery can also be rented for events, company parties, weddings, etc. (see “Orangery as an event location”).
Orangery ground floor
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The term orangery parterre denotes the open-air area in which the plants of the orangery - their symmetrical arrangement was important - invited people to stroll. But it was also used for vegetable beds, as an orchard and for smaller greenhouses, which became more and more intensive over time.
Originally it stretched on both sides of the so-called “ Meidlinger Allee”, which extends from the Meidlinger Tor at the end of Schönbrunner Straße to the courtyard of Schönbrunn Palace.
While the citrus trees were increasingly placed in the Schönbrunn palace gardens around 1905, the actual orangery parterre was converted into a fruit and vegetable garden.
Since in 1951/1952 the reserve garden of Schönbrunn had to make way for an extension of the Schönbrunn zoo , greenhouses and hotbeds were built. The required boiler house was installed in the easternmost part of the orangery, where it remained until 1995. The roof was also renovated on this occasion.
Redevelopment
Between 1980 and 1985, these greenhouses were removed and green areas laid out in the form they had existed during the reign of Maria Theresa.
The study on the renovation of the orangery commissioned by the castle administration could not be carried out because the necessary funds were not made available from the federal budget .
It was not until the establishment of the Schönbrunn Palace Culture and Operations Society mbH on October 1, 1992 that the company became independent of the budget plans of the various responsible ministries and was able to start work.
The glass doors have been renewed. The hall was divided lengthways into two sections by a glass wall, which are used for plant storage and as an event hall. The necessary ancillary rooms such as cloakrooms and toilets were created for the event hall .
Orangery as an event location
- On the occasion of an incognito visit by the Russian heir to the throne - the later Tsar Paul - with Emperor Joseph II in the late autumn of 1781, meals were served in the orangery.
- On February 6, 1785, Emperor Joseph II organized a “Spring Festival on a Winter's Day” in the orangery, which the graphic artist Hieronymus Löschenkohl recorded in one engraving. However, he kept the events in the long room together.
- On the occasion of a visit by his sister Marie Christine of Austria and Albert Kasimir von Sachsen-Teschen , her husband, Emperor Joseph II organized another spring festival in winter on February 7, 1786, which went down in music history. Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart fought each other in a musical competition.
- During the Congress of Vienna on October 11, 1814, a festival was held to pass the time.
- In 1905 the 1st International Botanical Congress took place in Vienna, in which all European countries, the USA , Argentina , China and the Congo took part. A specialized exhibition was set up in the orangery and was visited by 13,000 people.
- Today the orangery is a popular venue for international events, political events, receptions and company celebrations, but also gala dinners and weddings. With “La Vera” an in-house catering is available. The baroque orangery garden can also be used for events on request. In addition, the Schönbrunn Orangery is the headquarters of the “Schönbrunn Palace Orchestra Vienna”, whose concerts have already been attended by over 1 million visitors.
Bridal myrtle of Maria Theresa
A foster child with an unusual history in the Schönbrunn Orangery is Maria Theresa's bride myrtle .
As from other ruling houses, Maria Theresa received bridal gifts from the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople in 1736 , which were brought to Vienna in a mule caravan. Among them was a living gift a myrtle tree as a symbol of love, which until now has been thriving thanks to good care. It was not until autumn 2006 that the news announced that Maria Theresa's bridal myrtle had been repotted once again.
Further information
See also
- Old Palm House (Vienna Schönbrunn)
- Palm House (Vienna Schönbrunn)
- Sundial House (Vienna-Schönbrunn)
- Palm House (Vienna) in the Burggarten
literature
- Leopold Urban: The Orangery of Schönbrunn . Österreichischer Agrarverlag, Klosterneuburg 1999, ISBN 3-7040-1427-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schönbrunn Palace Concerts
- ^ University of Vienna: Orangery - The festival in the Orangery at Schönbrun 1786 , accessed on March 26, 2008
- ^ Josef Pröll: Federal Gardens are unique cultural assets with contemporary tasks , accessed on March 26, 2008
Web links
Coordinates: 48 ° 11 ′ 6 ″ N , 16 ° 19 ′ 0 ″ E