Sisi Museum, Imperial Apartments

The Imperial Apartments are the former private and official rooms of the Imperial family in the Hofburg, the former winter residence of the Habsburgs.

You will be guided not only through the conference room and study of the Emperor, but you will also view the salon, bedroom and dressing room (with gymnastics equipment!) of the Empress, who has long since become known as “Sisi”.

The Sisi Museum in the Imperial Apartments shows numerous personal objects once owned by Elisabeth and compares the myth of “Sisi” with the facts of her life.

At Christmastide in 1837 Duke Max and Ludovika in Bavaria were awaiting the birth of their fourth child. Elisabeth came into the world on 24 December at half-past ten in the evening. Her birth was regarded as particularly auspicious for various reasons. It had occurred on Christmas Eve and on a Sunday, and the little girl had been born with a tooth showing, a so-called ‘dens connatus’, an extremely rare occurrence which was held to presage good fortune in life.

To mark the 175th anniversary of the empress’s birth a number of new displays have been added to the Sisi Museum and the Imperial Apartments in the Vienna Hofburg. Since September the Trabantenstube has housed a display featuring the biographies of Elisabeth’s children together with original objects relating to them. And the Large Antechamber of the Imperial Apartments contains life-size photographic figures of the empress’s brothers and sisters together with their biographies. The empress’s bathroom makes a fresh and colourful impression in honour of the 175th anniversary of her birth, the original wallpaper having been carefully removed and replaced with an exact replica. The anniversary has also been marked with the meticulous restoration of two famous paintings by Franz Xaver Winterhalter showing Sisi in a ball gown with the famous diamond stars in her hair, and Franz Joseph in full dress uniform.

Duration: 1,5 hours