Palais Lobkowitz, Vienna

The Palais Lobkowitz, also called the Palais Dietrichstein-Lobkowitz, stands on the Lobkowitzplatz in the Inner City. According to Wikipedia it counts among the oldest palace buildings in Vienna. The square was called the Schweinemarkt, the pig market, until 1716, because the city's "Saumarkt" was held here until the end of the seventeenth century. Before the palace there stood a bathhouse and a larger corner house on the site, and the builder had both of them pulled down. The bathhouse is documented from about 1300, and from 1434 it belonged to a house of canons and was afterwards called the Dorotheerbad. The corner house, much larger than the bath, had been a free manor from early on, and its main front faced the pig market. The builder was Philipp Sigmund Graf Dietrichstein, the imperial master of the horse. Giovanni Pietro Tencalla designed the building.

The striking main portal was added between 1709 and 1711 and changed the look of the house decisively. This work is attributed to Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, and Wikipedia calls his solution for the main portal unique in Vienna. Above the gate arches a richly decorated, three-dimensional diadem arch. The stonemasons Elias Hügel and Giovanni Battista Passerini, both from Kaisersteinbruch, carried out the work. The stonemason Ambrosius Regondi, also from Kaisersteinbruch, supplied the hard Kaiserstein for the steps of the main staircase. Prince Ferdinand Philipp von Lobkowitz bought the palace in 1745, and it stayed with his family until they sold it to the Republic of Austria. He left it to his son Franz Joseph Maximilian, who had the festival hall converted for concerts in 1799.

Around the turn of the nineteenth century Ludwig van Beethoven was a frequent guest at the palace. Its owner at the time was an important patron of the composer. Beethoven dedicated his Third Symphony to him, a work first inscribed to Napoleon and therefore known as the Eroica. It was first heard in the palace's festival hall on 9 June 1804, with Beethoven conducting. The hall later came to be called the Eroica Hall. In March 1807 Beethoven's Fourth Symphony also had its first performance here. On 23 January 1805 the Czech violinist Vaclav Pichl suffered a fatal stroke in the festival hall while playing a violin concerto. After two concerts in the Winter Riding School of the Hofburg, music lovers founded the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in 1812, and the list for those interested lay open in the palace. During the Congress of Vienna the house saw many festivities and balls. From 1869 to 1909 the French embassy had its seat in the house. The Republic of Austria bought the building from the Lobkowitz family in 1979 and had it thoroughly restored. On 26 October 1991 it opened the Austrian Theatre Museum here.

On site: The main portal on the Lobkowitzplatz carries a three-dimensional diadem arch. The façade still looks largely as it did when it was built, whereas the interior has changed. In the courtyard opposite the gate, a fountain sits in a wall niche, and beneath the figure of the reclining Hercules the Nemean lion and the Cretan bull drink from the basin.