Villa Epstein, Protected heritage villa in Baden, Austria

Villa Epstein is a five-axis villa with a three-storey central risav and a column portico on a raised terrace, built in strict Historicist Renaissance forms. The garden facade repeats the five-axis layout without a portico, and the side facades are also five-axis. The property includes a neo-Romanesque chapel and a glasshouse orangery.

Gustav von Epstein, head of the Lazar Epstein bank, had Otto Wagner build the villa in 1867 as a country house, replacing an 1860 building. After the 1873 stock-market crash Epstein was forced to sell, and Archduke Rainer bought the estate in May 1874 and used it for decades in summer. Archduchess Maria Karolina died there on 17 July 1915; since 1994 an art gallery has occupied the villa.

The villa's name recalls two owners: banker Gustav Ritter von Epstein, who commissioned it, and Archduke Rainer, who bought it in 1874 and spent summers there. His widow, Archduchess Maria Karolina, died in the house on 17 July 1915. Since 1994 a art gallery has occupied the villa, and its operator also owns the main house, chapel and orangery.

The villa stands in Baden, Lower Austria, at the coordinates 48.00908, 16.21610. The former stable and utility building at Kornhäuselstraße 10, about 150 metres south of the main house, was converted into a garage after the nearby Thermalstrandbad opened roughly 300 metres away. The main house, chapel and orangery belong to the gallery operator.

The 1867 glasshouse, built with the main house and two outbuildings and enlarged in 1876, was planned to hold a salon, two glasshouse rooms, a propagation house and a room for raising hothouse plants. Its triumphal-arch portal between paired pilasters sits almost on axis with the villa entrance.