Enjoy here
Open the app →

Hermesvilla

Austria

You reach the Hermesvilla through the Lainzer Tiergarten, an enclosed hunting ground in Vienna's 13th district that is now also a nature reserve. When it was built, this land lay outside the city. Emperor Franz Joseph I decided on the project in the summer of 1881, under the working name "Villa Waldruh", and had it built between 1882 and 1886 to plans by the architect Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer. It was a gift to his wife, Empress Elisabeth, who often wanted to be far from court ceremony, and it has been called her "castle of dreams". By 1885 at the latest it had a new name, Villa Hermes. Elisabeth herself commissioned the Berlin sculptor Ernst Herter to make "Hermes the Guardian", the white marble figure that still stands in the garden in front of the house.

Read the full story in the app →

Runs in your browser — no install, no account to start. Three full stories a day are free.