Schloss Schönau

Schloss Schönau stands in the village of Schönau an der Triesting in Lower Austria’s industrial quarter. The present building replaced an 11th-century fortress that once guarded newly settled Bavarians. After the Turkish siege of 1683 it served briefly as a refuge, but nothing of that early structure remains. The current palace was raised after 1796 by Baron Peter von Braun, one of Austria’s richest men at the time. He installed the country’s first gas lighting and laid out an underground grotto system around the Temple of Night, now a listed monument. Nearby stand the protected Felsbrücke rock bridge and the Lion Gate at the eastern entrance. The estate passed through many hands: Johann von Liechtenstein, Jérôme Bonaparte, Emperor Franz Joseph I and Erzherzog Otto all left their mark. After the Second World War it housed Wehrmacht offices, then Soviet and USIA administration. In 1951 it became the property of Alexandrine Baronin Happack, who leased it to W. C. Holwerff. Between 1965 and 1973 the site served as an emigrant camp for Soviet Jews bound for Israel, processing about 70,000 people. Later it housed the Gendarmerie’s Cobra unit until 1992. Visitors can still see the restored guest apartments in the old hunting lodge. Guided tours once led to the surviving fragments of the Temple of Night, linked to Mozart’s The Magic Flute. A small café by the Lion Gate offers a view into one corner of the landscaped park. The Waldorf kindergarten now occupies the former water-castle site, while the Rudolf Steiner Landschule’s residence sits in the parade courtyard. The surrounding park, one of Austria’s most important garden monuments, shelters ancient trees and remains largely untouched.