Silver Collection
Imperial Apartments
A brief history

Silver Collection

The Silver Collection in the Vienna Hofburg looks after and preserves a rich legacy of objects associated with the culture of dining at the imperial court. After the end of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918, the holdings from various court household departments that serviced the imperial dining table were transferred to the ownership of the Republic of Austria. Comprising around 135,000 objects, of which a part is presented in the museum showrooms, today this unique collection gives an insight into the pomp and ceremony of dining at the imperial court.

Apart from the imperial silverware, the focus of the collection includes precious porcelain services – from the important Habsburg collection of eighteenth-century East Asian porcelain to masterpieces from the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory – as well as monumental gilt-bronze centrepieces and fine drinking glass services used at imperial banquets. And no banquet would be complete without the famous imperial napkin, still elaborately folded today in keeping with tradition by the ‘housekeepers’ of the Silver Collection.

Virtual Tour

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Room 1: Titania

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Room 2: Icon

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Room 3: Empress and queen

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Room 4: Retreats

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Room 5: Childhood and youth

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Room 6: Family

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Room 7: Death and mourning

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Room 8: Sport and beauty

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Room 9: Fashion and Clothing

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Room 10: Assassination

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Room 11: Myth

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Room 12: Media star Sisi

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Emperor's Staircase

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Trabant Guards Room

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Audience Waiting Room

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Audience Chamber

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Conference Room

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Study

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Bedroom

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Large Salon

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Small Salon

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Living Room & Bedroom

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Dressing & Exercise Room

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Lavatory and Bathroom

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Berglroom

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Large Salon of Empress Elisabeth

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Small Salon of Empress Elisabeth

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Large Anteroom

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Alexander Apartments & Red Salon

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Dining Room

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Coronation banquet of Joseph II

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Mundzeug of Empress Maria Theresa

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Baroque showpieces

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Court porcelain in the nineteenth century

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Flower Plates

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Milan Coronation Banquet

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Illuminated table decor

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Courtly dining on the move

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Viennese Biedermeier Porcelain

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Laxenburg Centrepiece

Coronation banquet of Joseph II

Part of a series by Martin van Meytens recording the coronation of Joseph II as Roman King, the large-scale painting illustrates eighteenth-century imperial dining ceremonial down to the last detail.

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Mundzeug of Empress Maria Theresa

The case containing the empress’s personal eating implements from the middle of the eighteenth century bears the prominent number 1 in the inventory of the Silver Collection.

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Baroque showpieces

The earliest pieces in the Silver Collection include the imperial lavabo (ewer and basin) sets, the Rock Crystal Service and a Florentine pietra dura présentoir.

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Court porcelain in the nineteenth century

With the changes in table etiquette, precious porcelain services were acquired by the court for use on the imperial table. In the Empire era, the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory supplied contemporary tableware in ‘court form’.

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Flower Plates

For almost a century, the Flower Plates made a colourful statement at the dessert course of imperial banquets. 

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Milan Coronation Banquet

he new display of the Milan Centrepiece makes the opulence of a coronation banquet an immediate experience, both overall and in the smallest details. The monumental centrepiece of fire-gilt bronze was made in 1836 for the coronation in Milan of Emperor Ferdinand I as King of Lombardy-Venetia.

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Illuminated table decor

At formal dinners held in the evening centrepieces provided magnificent decoration and brilliant illumination. The numerous dinners at the Viennese court left an enduring legacy – a rich collection of elaborate bronze-gilt centrepieces from Paris and Vienna.

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Courtly dining on the move

The many transport crates and cases preserved in the Silver Collection attest to the elaborate arrangements made for dining in the appropriate style when members of the imperial family were travelling within the Habsburg Monarchy.

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Viennese Biedermeier Porcelain

During the age of Biedermeier (roughly 1815–1848), the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory supplied several series of plates for the imperial table, including masterpieces from the manufactory’s pinnacle of artistic production known as the Sorgenthal Era.

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Laxenburg Centrepiece

The dessert centrepiece with sixty-one ancestral portraits taken from the paintings collection at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck honours the dynastic unions of historical ruling couples from the House of Habsburg.

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Room 1: Titania

The tour of the museum begins with the legacy left by the empress to the ‘souls of the future’ in the form of the poetic journal that Elisabeth deposited for posterity in Switzerland.

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Room 2: Icon

Displayed here are the famous portraits of the imperial couple by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. The highlight is the iconic likeness of Empress Elisabeth in a ballgown wearing her diamond star hair clips.

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Room 3: Empress and queen

As Empress of Austria and crowned Queen of Hungary, Elisabeth occupied a pre-eminent position in the Imperial and Royal Monarchy. Her role as the ‘First Lady’ of the empire was closely bound up with official or ceremonial duties and the outward pomp of the monarchy.

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Room 4: Retreats

Two places played a special role in the life of the empress, offering her opportunities for a retreat from public life and space for her personal interests: the Achilleion on the Greek island of Corfu and the Hermes Villa in the Lainzer Tiergarten, a hunting reserve on the outskirts of Vienna.

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Room 5: Childhood and youth

This room takes visitors into the empress’s childhood, spent together with her seven brothers and sisters far apart from the world of courtly ceremony.

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Room 6: Family

Elisabeth had an ambivalent relationship both with her Bavarian family and with the Habsburg kin she had married into. While her mother and siblings gave her support and refuge over the years, Elisabeth invariably felt ill-at-ease in the imperial family.

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Room 7: Death and mourning

Fate dealt Elisabeth many blows that had an enduring impact on her life. She felt the deepest grief at the deaths of her children Sophie and Rudolf.

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Room 8: Sport and beauty

Wherever the empress went she was the object of admiration. Elisabeth’s beauty was legendary.

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Room 9: Fashion and Clothing

The Fashion and Clothing Room opens up a personal perspective, showcasing clothing and accessories that reveal the links between fashion, the body and self-presentation.

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Room 10: Assassination

The assassination on Lake Geneva in September 1898 concludes the section of the tour that focuses on the life of Empress Elisabeth.

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Room 11: Myth

In this room the focus shifts from the story of her life to how she was commemorated and viewed by posterity.

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Room 12: Media star Sisi

Even after the collapse of the monarchy in 1918, Empress Elisabeth continued to fascinate people. The first film about the empress appeared as early as 1919/20, long before the famous trilogy starring Romy Schneider.

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Emperor's Staircase

The entrance to the Sisi Museum and the Imperial Apartments.

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Trabant Guards Room

Coming from the Emperor’s Staircase the visitor entered this room in which the Trabanten lifeguards kept watch night and day.

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Audience Waiting Room

Emperor Franz Joseph gave general audiences twice a week, at which any of the subjects of his empire could attend to present a matter of their concern to the emperor.

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Audience Chamber

Over the course of his long reign, Franz Joseph gave audiences to around 260,000 individuals.

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Conference Room

This room was used for the ministerial conferences which were always chaired by the emperor. It could also be entered from the room occupied by the duty aide-de-camp, who announced the presence of the ministers to the emperor.

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Study

‘As soon as the children were capable of eating on their own they were allowed to lunch with him in his study – often as many as eight at a time.’

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Bedroom

When the imperial couple moved into separate bedrooms, Franz Joseph had a portable brown-painted iron bedstead set up in this room, an arrangement he also used at Schönbrunn, Budapest, Laxenburg, Bad Ischl and Gödöllö.

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Large Salon

"… he [i.e. Franz Joseph] liked dallying in these small drawing rooms when he was visited by his family, his brother, his grandchildren, nephews etc. There in their company he would take a cup of tea at the twilight hour, chatting with them, and above all, enquiring after their wishes…"

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Small Salon

The Small Salon served as a smoking room and is today a memorial room to Emperor Maximilian of Mexico.

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Living Room & Bedroom

Originally this room was the bedroom of the imperial couple. In 1870 Franz Joseph moved into a separate bedroom in the Imperial Chancellery Wing.

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Dressing & Exercise Room

The Dressing Room/Exercise Room was where Elisabeth spent most of her time. This was where her day began, in the winter at six o’clock in the morning, starting with her daily hair-dressing ritual.

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Lavatory and Bathroom

Facing the Amalia Wing courtyard, behind the Dressing Room, are the empress’s Lavatory and Bathroom, which were refurbished in 1876 during Elisabeth’s occupancy.

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Berglroom

This rooms are painted with trompe l’oeil landscape murals commissioned by Empress Maria Theresa and executed by Johann Wenzel Bergl.

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Large Salon of Empress Elisabeth

This room was used by Elisabeth as a reception room. When the empress was resident at the Hofburg, the imperial couple occasionally took breakfast together in this room.

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Small Salon of Empress Elisabeth

During Elisabeth’s time this room was used as an additional reception room.

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Large Anteroom

Originally Empress Elisabeth’s apartments were accessed via the Eagle Stairs, which connected the Leopoldine Wing and the Amalia Wing. When the Leopoldine Wing was converted into the offices of the Federal President in 1946 access to the Imperial Apartments was blocked up.

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Alexander Apartments & Red Salon

The Alexander Apartments were used by Empress Elisabeth for dinners and receptions.

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Dining Room

Once a week on Sunday the imperial family foregathered at a family dinner, which every Habsburg currently in Vienna was obliged to attend.

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Silver Collection

All rooms at a glance

The Silver Collection is located on the ground floor of the Imperial Chancellery Wing of the Vienna Hofburg. Highlights include the earliest items of the collection together with magnificent centrepieces and porcelain from the imperial manufactory made for the Viennese court. Following completion of Phase Two of the reorganization of the Sisi Museum, tours are now extended to include the historic Silver Collection.

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Sisi Museum

Since 2004 the Sisi Museum has been housed in the Stephan apartments, so named after Archduke Stephan Viktor.

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Imperial Apartments

The Hofburg was the residence of the Habsburgs for over 600 years and thus the centre of the Holy Roman Empire.

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Further Reading

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