Schloss Neuwaldegg

Geschichte

Schloss Neuwaldegg is a Baroque palace with an English garden in the Hernals borough of Vienna, Austria.1 It is currently privately owned and rented out for a variety of private and public events.HistoryNeuwaldegg manor arose from a farmstead acquired by the Imperial councillor Stefan Agler after the 1529 Siege of Vienna. Agler was ennobled to the rank of Ritter by the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I and in 1539 received the title of an Edler of Paumgarten and Neuwaldegg.The present-day palace was built around 1697 at the behest of Count Theodor von Strattmann, most probably according to plans designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, and surrounded by a French formal garden. In 1765 Field Marshal Count Franz Moritz von Lacy, confidant of Empress Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II, purchased the estate. He had the building again enlarged and the English landscape park laid out, one of the first in the Habsburg Monarchy. It included 17 reed cottages on the Hameau (French for "hamlet") hill to accommodate Lacy's guests, as well as a mausoleum built in 1794 that became his last resting place. When he opened his gardens to the public, they became a popular destination for Vienna day-trippers.