Palais Lobkowitz, Vienna, Baroque palace in Innere Stadt, Austria.
Palais Lobkowitz is a Baroque palace in Vienna's inner district featuring elaborately decorated rooms across multiple levels. Its grand staircases, ornate marble columns, and painted ceiling frescoes showcase the architectural skill of the period.
Philipp Sigmund Count von Dietrichstein bought the site and a neighbouring bathhouse in 1685 and had both demolished; Giovanni Pietro Tencalla built the palace between 1685 and 1687. Around 1709 Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach added the main portal with its three-dimensional diadem arch, carved by Giovanni Battista Passerini and Elias Hügel. The Lobkowitz family owned it from 1745 to 1980, after which the state acquired it.
Since 1991 the palace has housed the Austrian Theatre Museum, part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Its festival room, the Eroica Hall, is named after Beethoven's Third Symphony, premiered here on 9 June 1804 with the composer conducting. In 1812 the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde was founded, with its first seat in the palace.
Access to the palace is through guided tours offered in multiple languages that cover the ceremonial spaces and art displays. Comfortable footwear is recommended as exploration of the multi-level interior involves numerous stairs.
The festival hall where Beethoven conducted the premiere of his Third Symphony on 9 June 1804 became known as the Eroica Hall. His Fourth Symphony was also premiered there in March 1807, and in January 1805 the violinist Václav Pichl suffered a fatal stroke while playing a violin concerto in the same room.
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