Belvedere Palace is located on a hill south of the historic city centre and offers a beautiful view of Vienna. It was built between 1714 and 1723 by Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt for Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736). The Upper and Lower Belvedere form a baroque ensemble with the connecting gardens.
Today, the two palace buildings house the collections of the Austrian Belvedere Gallery with major works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka and rooms for temporary exhibitions.
The Austrian State Treaty was signed in the Upper Belvedere on 15 May 1955.
View from the upper Belvedere of the Baroque garden, the lower Belvedere and Vienna with St Stephen's Cathedral.
View of the castle from the ‘Shell Fountain’. In the centre of the fountain, tritons hold a basin filled with shells.
In addition to his winter palace on Himmelpfortgasse in Vienna and Belvedere Palace, Prince Eugene also owned other palaces:
Between 1705 and 1712, Prince Eugene had a hunting lodge built in Bilje in what is now north-east Croatia. After his victory at Belgrade in 1717, Prince Eugene had the four-winged Ráckeve Palace (Savoyai-kastély in Hungarian) built near Ráckeve, south of Budapest, presumably by Lucas von Hildebrandt as a spacious country residence in the vineyards. In the same year, he acquired Schloss Hof (Hof palace) in the Marchfeld region. Under the direction of Lukas von Hildebrandt, it was remodelled from 1725 to 1729 into a country residence that could also serve as a fortress if necessary. In the same year, Prince Eugene received the Obersiebenbrunn estate as a gift from Charles VI. From 1725 to 1736, he had the associated Obersiebenbrunn Palace baroqueised and provided with an extensive pleasure garden. In 1726, Prince Eugene bought the Engelhartstetten estate with Niederweiden Palace, which he had remodelled into a hunting lodge.
I was once asked: How many children did Prince Eugene have?
Prince Eugene remained faithful throughout his life to the vow of celibacy that he had taken in 1678 when he was ordained to the lower orders. Nothing is known about his affairs with women. The rumour of homoerotic tendencies that arose in 1705 stuck to him. During his lifetime, there were poems in circulation that accused him of homosexuality. However, there is no evidence of this.
