The Furniture Museum of Vienna

4-Sep-2012 • Vienna Austria

Part of the admission tickets we bought at the Hofburg Palace included a visit to the Furniture Museum.  To be honest, I wasn't impressed by the inclusion of this museum to the super grand museum palaces that the Hofburg and Schonbrunn Palaces are.  Anyway, I did like it a lot and I was glad we went.  I considered it an extra bonus.  The palaces were good enough but the Furniture Museum was what I call icing on the cake.  Marc and I spent a good part of the afternoon of our second day in Vienna there.

I have heard it before or read about it somewhere, but it was on this visit that I seemed to learn for the second time that the palaces and castles European Royalty lived in weren't all fully furnished year round.  In fact, many of the palace rooms were empty and furniture were only gathered and collected when it was time to fit rooms.

What I also liked about the visit was that photography was allowed inside the Furniture Museum.  With the permission given, we took pictures to our hearts content.

portable thrones

a carriage

palace furniture on both sides of the aisle

busts of beloved Sisi everywhere

candelabras galore

foot rests on the wall and kneelers for praying on the floor

Marie Antoinette

"Let them eat cake!"

an armoire

Looks like an Ethan Allen piece belonging to the "Hofburg Collection"

Retail:  priceless

vases. vases

a wheelchair

oil portraits

One of the many oil paintings with the beloved Austrian queen Sisi as the subject

Standing next to a life sized statue of Sisi

royal thrones

more thrones

Some furniture used by Sisi and one of her dresses

Although she was a royal queen with lots of clothes, it is said that none of her wardrobe is left since she passed away.  In fact, one of the ball gowns on one of the life sized statues in one of the galleries inside the Hofburg Palace was a copy of the original.

Beautiful gilded furniture and chinoiserie wall panels

This area rug gives me the creeps.  Although it may have been hip back in the day, it just isn't so now.

A young girl's room circa 1825-1830

bathroom fixtures

I wondered what this was.  A water heater?  A water tank?

A hodgepodge of chairs of various styles and eras

The Coat of Arms Room

The Egyptian Room