Schloss Niederweiden

Schloss Niederweiden is a Baroque palace in Engelhartstetten in the Marchfeld, a flat plain in Lower Austria. It belongs to the group of six Marchfeld palaces. The site once held a medieval water castle which fell into ruin before the present building was put up in 1693–94 by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach for Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg. In 1725 Prince Eugen of Savoy bought the hunting lodge and remodelled it in his own style. The palace owes its present appearance to Maria Theresia, who commissioned the court architect Nikolaus Pacassi around 1765 to redesign it. The grand hall’s ceiling paintings are by Jean-Baptiste Pillement. Only the hunting kitchen, housed in a separate building, still shows the state it had under Prince Eugen. After years as a stable and later as a barracks for the Red Army, the palace was restored from about 1980 and became a venue for exhibitions. Visitors find fifteen stately rooms available for hire, including the baroque hunting kitchen from Prince Eugen’s time. The surrounding Niederweiden Baroque garden was laid out on land that once contained the ruins of the medieval village of Grafenweiden. Two other buildings survive from the Baroque period: the former dairy farm and the Old Hunter’s House, both now in private use. The larger part of the garden has reverted to wild woodland managed for forestry and hunting, while smaller areas host the Grafenweiden plant workshop with its tree nursery and educational programmes.