Springer-Schlösschen

The Springer-Schlössl stands in Vienna’s Meidling district, a late-19th-century villa built for Gustav Springer by the architects Fellner & Helmer. The building is surrounded by a 40 000 m² park that once belonged to Carl von Hügel, a garden expert who landscaped both this area and the nearby Schönbrunn grounds. Seventeen of Hügel’s original trees remain as living reminders of his work. The villa’s history includes a period as a Nazi school and later a return to the Springer family before becoming a seminar hotel run by the ÖVP’s Political Academy. After the academy left in 2024 the site stayed in party hands and now serves as the Campus Tivoli. The park still carries scars from wartime bombing that missed the house but damaged trees. Visitors find a protected monument with seminar rooms and hotel accommodation, set among the old trees and pathways laid out by von Hügel. The villa’s interiors reflect its late-Victorian origins, while the surrounding park offers quiet walks among oaks and lindens. The contrast between the elegant building and the wartime damage tells part of the site’s story without needing further explanation.