Hermesvilla

The Hermesvilla stands in the Lainzer Tiergarten, a 2 500-hectare wooded hunting ground once reserved for the Habsburgs. Emperor Franz Joseph built it in the 1880s as a gift for his wife Empress Elisabeth, who called it her ‘castle of dreams’. The villa’s name comes from a white-marble statue of Hermes in the garden. After the Second World War the building was neglected, but a 1963 film and later restoration brought it back to life. Today it belongs to the Vienna Museum and hosts exhibitions on cultural history. Inside, murals by Hans Makart, Gustav Klimt and Victor Tilgner decorate the walls. The Empress’s private rooms include a gymnasium with sports-themed frescoes and a bedroom preserved with a massive baroque state bed. A spiral staircase links the bedroom to the garden. Outside, a marble statue by Ulrike Truger shows three sides of Elisabeth’s personality: duty, escape and freedom. The stables in the left wing still hold original partitions and a circular round pen where the Empress’s horses were exercised. For decades afterwards the Spanish Riding School’s Lipizzaners spent summer holidays here. The villa sits amid meadows and woodland paths, offering a quiet place to walk among the trees.