Lainzer Tiergarten

The Lainzer Tiergarten is a 2,450-hectare nature reserve on Vienna's western edge, entirely enclosed by a 22-kilometer stone wall commissioned by Emperor Charles VI in 1728 as an imperial hunting ground. Under Franz Joseph I the estate took on its most personal significance: between 1882 and 1886 he had the Hermes Villa built in Historicist style for Empress Elisabeth, who used its isolation as a retreat from court ceremony. The empress's bedroom, painted in part by Gustav Klimt and Hans Makart, survives in its original state and is now administered by the Wien Museum. Open to the public since 1941, the reserve today hosts free-roaming wild boar, red deer, and mouflon that walkers encounter regularly on the forest trails — a genuinely wild experience within the boundaries of a European capital. Observation towers offer views across the Viennese forest.

Habsburg hunting ground, public since 1923, with free-roaming wild boar and deer, the Hermesvilla nestled inside.