Palais Fürstenberg, Neoclassical palace in First District, Vienna, Austria
Palais Fürstenberg is a four-storey town palace at Domgasse 10, corner of Grünangergasse 4, in Vienna's Innere Stadt. Its main front on Grünangergasse has seven window axes, the Domgasse side six; the fourth-floor windows are lower and plain square. A high rusticated basement with bossage and diamond quoins carries a surrounding cornice, and above the Beletage windows alternate triangular and round-arched pediments over scroll ornament.
A private house was first documented on this spot in 1390, in a dispute over rainwater drainage; from the 15th century it served as the Otto Weissen foundation house for chaplains. In 1702 the imperial councillor Ernst Freiherr von Hatzenberg bought the dilapidated building, had it demolished and began the palace, finished around 1720, probably by Antonio Beduzzi with input from Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt. After the Störck family sold it in 1873 it passed to the princesses Elisabeth and Amalia von Croÿ and in 1882 to Friedrich Landgraf von Fürstenberg, who had Ernst Krombholz renovate it.
The wooden double doors of the main portal carry the name "Österreichisches Buchgewerbehaus", the popular name the building took after 1927 when the Austrian book trade associations acquired it. Inside, the stairwell holds white statues of Minerva, Mercury, Venus and Hercules in black marble niches; the sculptor is unknown, though experts note a resemblance to works by Georg Raphael Donner.
The building currently serves as the headquarters of the Austrian Book Trade Association and holds status as a protected historical monument in Vienna's city center. Keep in mind this is an active business site, so access to interiors may be restricted.
Two sculpted windhounds representing the heraldic animals of the von Hatzenberg family guard the main entrance portal. These heraldic figures are a rare detail that many passersby overlook.
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