Hermesvilla

The Hermesvilla is a small palace inside the Lainzer Tiergarten, the former imperial hunting reserve on the western edge of Vienna. Its name comes from a marble Hermes statue by Ernst Herter set in the forecourt. Emperor Franz Joseph I commissioned the villa from Carl von Hasenauer between 1882 and 1886 as a present to his wife Elisabeth, who called it her castle of dreams and retreated here regularly until her assassination in 1898. The interiors are famous for frescoes by Hans Makart, by Gustav Klimt and his brothers in Sisi's bedroom, and for a gymnastics apparatus that documents the empress's fitness obsession. Today the Wien Museum runs the villa for changing exhibitions on Habsburg history; visitors reach it in a 20-minute walk from the Lainzer Tor and often combine the trip with wildlife spotting in the surrounding reserve.