Schloss Braiten

Schloss Braiten stands in the town of Baden, a short distance south-west of Vienna. Built in 1809, the three-storey late-classical building replaced an earlier house on the same site. Its seven-window façade faces Braitnerstraße, with four tall Ionic pilasters marking the central section. Above, the second floor has three large semi-circular windows and a high attic once carried stone sculptures, now lost. The Polish scholar Count Joseph Max Ossolinski commissioned the house and its outbuilding from master builder Anton Hantl in 1809–10. Ossolinski filled the rooms with scholars and artists, including Ludwig van Beethoven, who worked here on parts of Piano Sonata No. 28 during the summer of 1816. Later owners enlarged the palace in the mid-19th century, adding façades and terraces. Erzherzogin Marie Anna, daughter of Emperor Franz II, lived here in 1848 while the revolution raged in Baden. Inside, the main rooms retain their original proportions and decorative plasterwork. At the rear, three glazed loggias open toward the garden that once stretched southwards. A small neo-Gothic pavilion still stands at the park’s edge near Elisabethstraße. After decades as a school and social-pedagogical institute, the building now serves as a cultural centre for the local community.