Schloss Hof

Schloss Hof stands in Marchfeld, a broad plain near Austria’s border with Slovakia. It began as a modest castle in the 1620s east of an older fortress. Prince Eugene of Savoy bought the estate in 1726 and enlarged it into a grand Baroque hunting lodge. Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt designed the expansion in 1729. After Eugene’s death the property passed to his niece, then to Empress Maria Theresa in 1755. By the late 18th century Franz Anton Hillebrandt reshaped it into the palace seen today. The palace’s Baroque garden was restored to its historical form by 2019. During the First World War the building briefly housed the Imperial and Royal Naval Academy. A silver collectors’ coin features the castle on its obverse side. Nearby, the Meierhof is one of Europe’s largest surviving farmsteads. Workshops in the Meierhof show how people lived in the Baroque era through turning, pottery and gardening. Visitors walk through the terraced gardens with their mirror-like orangeries. The orangeries date from 1729–30 and still use an underground hot-air heating system. Old Austrian breeds roam the pastures: Nonius horses, Lipizzaners, Noriker draught horses, spectacled sheep and camels. Austro-Hungarian white donkeys graze alongside, some of the last in the world.