Once upon a time, two centuries and a bit, The German world was split in two, the Hapsburg Slavic lands and and the archduchess and kingdoms that would wind up under the Prussian Hohenzollerans before the whole thing blew up in the First World War. But that was later. 

Austria wasn’t much then, and it isn’t much now, but in this picturesque bit of nothing was Vienna, also known as Wein. The capital of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation for far shorter than one would expect, The downtown palace complex called the Hoffburg is where the family and their empire were headquartered for about 400 years, on and off. This was the most glamorous and expensive bit of palatial architecture ever made. Well worth a look. 

There were three phases in the construction of the complex, once in the 15th century when the schlubby Emperor Fredrick III died and his son Maximillian took over and turned out to be quite capable, this lasted until his grandson, who lived in what is now the Netherlands, managed to beat Henry VIII (he was), of the six wives, through a process know to historians as “heroic bribery,” for King of the Romans (the Pope had to crown one to make them the actual Emperor, so Chuck and his successors called themselves "Emperor-elect") Then the city became a bit of a backwater while Charles V (I of Spain) hung out in Spain and Brussels. 

The Second phase began when Charles abdicated and gave the German/Slavic part of the empire to his brother Ferdinand. It was he who built the first recognizable parts of the complex that still survive. Emperors came and went, all of them Hapsburg, and some of them lived elsewhere (Rudolph II lived primarily in Prague) until the empire collapsed for the umpteenth time in the 30 years war (1608-16twentysomething), and when it was all over, the Hapsburgs were still managing to be raking in the money, but only in the eastern part of the empire before the dynasty pooped out in the mid-18th century. The male line went completely extinct and the two remaining female cousins had their husbands go to war, and the younger of the two, Maria Theresa, won out. 

She and her 16 kids began an expensive building program and Vienna, now the capital of the empire and it’s two iterations of successor states that lasted until World War I. 

The final phase is what houses all the museums, all of which are worth a visit. The lords, ladies, and capitalist businesspeople built nifty buildings too, and most of them somehow managed to survive the bombing of World War II. 

Of course, there are the art museums and concert halls and the rest, all of which are worth a visit. A day’s visit just doesn’t cut it. Take a week at least

How this didn’t make the first few rounds of inscriptions is a mystery.