Schloss Obersiebenbrunn

Schloss Obersiebenbrunn is a Baroque palace with gardens in the village of Obersiebenbrunn in Lower Austria. The four-winged main building stands on a slight rise and is surrounded by a walled park. The palace was once part of the Marchfeld palaces route, though it is not yet included in the joint marketing. The palace has been owned by many notable figures. In 1725 Emperor Charles VI gave it to Prince Eugene of Savoy, who commissioned Lukas von Hildebrandt to remodel the building and Dominique Girard to design a star-shaped hunting park. After the Kollonitsch family, the estate passed to the Archdiocese of Vienna, which used it as a farm school and later a social centre for women. Since 2001 it has housed the Coptic monastery of St Antony and a Coptic museum. Visitors find the palace’s south façade dominated by a tall gate tower with a triangular pediment. Inside the park, an octagonal garden pavilion from 1728 contains painted scenes of hunting life. Nearby stand the priest’s house with its eight-sided chimney, the granary, and the old stable yard. The 4.26-hectare park, laid out with eight avenues radiating from a central pavilion, remains almost unchanged since the 18th century.