When his Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, Franz Josef the 1st, by the Grace of God Emperor of Austria,  King of Hungary and Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria;  King of Jerusalem, etc.;  Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Bukovina; Grand Prince of Transylvania, Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Auschwitz and Zator, of Teschen, Friaul, Ragusa and Zara; Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trento and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and in Istria; Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg etc.; Lord of Trieste, of Cattaro and on the Windic March; Grand Voivode of the Voivodeship of Serbia etc., etc., etc.(the et ceteras are official) moved permanently into his summer palace complex at Schenenbrunn, just outside of Vienna, he was already well into middle age, but he had been living there all his life. 

His life revolved around there and he never ventured to far, and although it is far older than he, it is with him and his great-great grandmother that the place is always associated. 

The Palace, which had been inhabited by millionaires since the end of the first millennium CE, only came to be bought by the Hapsburgs in the middle of the 16th century when Emperor Maximillian II bought the place as a hunting lodge. Not much happened in the way of improvements until after the War of the Austrian Succession, when Maria Theresa, last survivor of the line, decided to turn the place into an expensive imitation Versailles 

For the next century and three-quarters, billions of today’s euros were spent by the Hapsburg-Lorraines (MT and her hubby had 16 kids) on rebuilding and remodeling and commissioning art that glorified themselves until the whole thing (the dynasty, not the complex) collapsed in a heap in 1918, and this left the tiny rump of a republic with thousands of pieces of priceless art and architecture. So what you do you with all this stuff? Turn it into a museum of course!

And except for about ten years when it was used as an office for the Allied Occupation forces after World War II, it has remained so ever since. 

As museums go, it’s expensive. The cheapest is the children’s section at about ten euros, the cheap tour, in which they give you a recorder and you get to see about ten rooms, cost about 17€, the whole shebang costs about twice that per persons, and the gardens are included for pretty much everything on offer. You can easily spend a full day there, or more, and if you have the bucks it worth it. 

The best part of it is that you can get there by subway.