Stallburg

The Stallburg is a renaissance-style building in the Vienna city center located between Josefsplatz and Michaelerplatz. It is part of the Hofburg Palace.

Formerly the living quarters of Archduke Maximilian , later Emperor Maximilian II, it was built around 1558–1565 as a residence. From 1659 to 1776 it housed the art collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, called the Stallburg gallery. This collection forms the core of the later Kunsthistorisches Museum from 1889. Later the building became the Imperial Stables used to house the imperial horses, and even today it is still used by the Spanish Riding School (Spanische Hofreitschule).

Before moving to Vienna in 1659, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm formed his art collection of 1400 paintings in Brussels, where David Teniers the Younger painted views of his Brussels gallery, which are now spread among various collections. He made many miniatures of the paintings for use as models by engravers and published a catalog of the Italian paintings in the 1660s called Theatrum Pictorium.

Text adapted from “Stallburg” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Stallburg ranks #4,011 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #100 of the 201 mapped in Austria. Founded c. 1558, it is older than 38% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 755 atlas entries founded in the 16th century. 35 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Vienna, 1 km away. See how Austria compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗