Palais Lobkowitz, Vienna: A Baroque City Palace and Musical Landmark
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Elite Residence
On this page9 sections
History
Palais Lobkowitz, also known as Palais Dietrichstein-Lobkowitz, is a Baroque palace in Vienna, Austria, built between 1685 and 1687 for Count Philipp Sigmund von Dietrichstein. It was the first important Baroque city palace erected in Vienna after the second Ottoman siege of 1683, when the defeat of the Ottoman forces encouraged aristocratic investment in representative urban architecture.
Construction after 1683
The site originally held a house owned by Johann Franz Leopold Colonna von Fels. In 1685, Colonna von Fels sold it to Philipp Sigmund, the imperial chief stable master. Dietrichstein also acquired the neighboring bathhouse and had both buildings demolished. He commissioned Giovanni Pietro Tencalla, an architect active in Central Europe, to design the palace that occupies the site today.
The Dietrichstein family continued to alter the building after its initial construction. In 1709, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach designed a new principal portal, while his son Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach also undertook work for the palace. Their contributions helped shape the building’s distinctive Baroque appearance.
The Lobkowitz family and Beethoven
After passing through several owners, including Count Wenzel Gallas, the palace was acquired in 1745 by Ferdinand Philipp, Prince of Lobkowitz. It remained with the Lobkowitz family until 1980. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Franz Joseph Maximilian von Lobkowitz became an important patron of Ludwig van Beethoven, the German composer whose symphonies helped define the transition from the Classical to the Romantic period.
The palace’s festival hall became closely connected with Beethoven’s music. His Third Symphony was first performed there under his direction on 9 June 1804. The work had originally been dedicated to Napoleon and became known by the title Eroica. Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony was premiered in the same palace in March 1807. The hall later took the name Eroica Hall.
The festival hall was also the scene of a fatal event involving the Czech violinist and composer Vaclav Pichl, who suffered a stroke on 23 January 1805 while performing a violin concerto there.
Music, diplomacy, and changing uses
The palace played a role in the creation of the Society of Friends of Music, now known internationally as the Vienna Musikverein. After concerts at the Hofburg’s Winter Riding School on 29 November and 3 December 1812, music enthusiasts began organizing the society. A list of prospective founding members was kept at Palais Lobkowitz, which served as the society’s first headquarters.
Palais Lobkowitz also hosted numerous celebrations and balls during the Congress of Vienna, held from 18 September 1814 to 9 June 1815. Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the Lobkowitz family moved its principal residence to its hereditary palace at Roudnice nad Labem, north of Prague, and leased the Vienna palace to other occupants.
The building housed the French embassy from 1869 to 1909 and the Czechoslovak legation from 1919 to 1938. From 1939 to 1945, after alterations by Josef Hoffmann, an Austrian architect and designer associated with Viennese modernism, it operated as the House of Fashion.
Public museum
After the Second World War, the palace became the seat of the Vienna Institut Français. The Austrian state acquired it in 1980, and comprehensive renovation followed. Since 1991, the building has housed the Austrian Theatre Museum, part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna’s principal state art-history museum. Palais Lobkowitz is protected as a listed historic monument in Austria.
The palace stands on Lobkowitzplatz in Vienna’s Innere Stadt. Until 1716, the square was called Schweinemarkt, or Pig Market, because Vienna’s pig market was held there until the end of the seventeenth century. It had also served as one of Vienna’s execution sites.
Remains
Baroque exterior
Palais Lobkowitz occupies the former site of the Colonna von Fels house and the neighboring bathhouse, both cleared before construction. Its facade survives to a large extent in the original condition established during the building’s construction period. The palace is a representative Baroque composition, a style characterized by monumental forms, elaborate ornament, and theatrical spatial effects.
The principal staircase has steps made from hard Kaiserstein, a limestone quarried at Kaisersteinbruch near Vienna. The stone was supplied by the master stonemason Ambrosius Regondi. This material forms part of the palace’s surviving architectural fabric.
Principal portal
The principal portal, created in 1709, is crowned by a richly decorated three-dimensional diadem arch. This arrangement is described as unique in Vienna. Giovanni Battista Passerini and Elias Hügel, both from Kaisersteinbruch, executed the portal’s stonework. The portal is among the most distinctive surviving features of the palace exterior.
Festival hall and museum interiors
The palace’s festival hall, later called Eroica Hall, preserves the setting associated with the first performance of Beethoven’s Third Symphony in 1804 and the premiere of his Fourth Symphony in 1807. Its historical identity is therefore tied to the palace’s role in Vienna’s early nineteenth-century musical life.
The interior has undergone substantially more change than the facade. The building now contains the Austrian Theatre Museum, which forms part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. This present institutional use occupies a palace whose exterior retains much of its Baroque appearance while its interior reflects later alterations.
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