Schlosspark Schönau

Schloss Schönau stands in the village of Schönau an der Triesting in Lower Austria’s Industrieviertel region. The present building replaces a 11th-century fortress built to guard newly settled Bavarians. After the Turkish siege of 1683 it served as a refuge, though only a few wall fragments near the orchard remain from that time.

Baron Peter von Braun, one of Austria’s richest men, commissioned the current palace after 1796. He installed the country’s first gas lighting and laid out an underground grotto system around the Temple of Night, a freemason symbol linked to Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The park also once held a fairy-tale garden and features a protected rock bridge and Lion Gate. Later owners included Jérôme Bonaparte, Franz Joseph I and Erzherzog Otto, who remodelled the house in late-Gothic style for his daughter, the red Archduchess Elisabeth Marie.

The park is recognised as one of Austria’s foremost garden monuments and a natural monument. Old trees are preserved and the landscape garden kept close to its original form. Inside the hunting lodge, guest apartments have been restored, while the Temple of Night ruins can still be toured. A small café area at the Günselsdorf entrance offers a glimpse of the grounds, and the former water-castle site now houses a Waldorf kindergarten.