For centuries, Vienna was ruled by the Habsburg family.
They had two luxurious palaces in Vienna.
The Schönbrunn Palace,
with its expansive grounds standing at the edge of town,
was their summer residence.
Their main palace, the Hofburg, dominates the town center.
This imposing and sprawling complex
grew with the family empire from the 13th century
until just before World War I,
when this last "new wing" opened.
While the last Habsburg checked out in 1918,
the palace is still plenty busy.
It has the offices of the Austrian president
and it's home to hundreds of government workers,
the Spanish riding school, Vienna boys' choir,
and the palace itself welcomes the public.
The lavish imperial apartments seem designed
to give their royal residents
grandeur fit for a god.
After all, in the age of divine monarchs,
kings and emperors like the Habsburgs
claimed God himself ordained them
to rule with unquestioned authority.
The Habsburgs were one of a handful of royal families
who ruled nearly all of Europe until World War I.
The walls between the rooms
are wide enough to hide servants' corridors.
The big, ornate stoves, which servants fed from behind,
heated the rooms.
The decor is splendid Baroque --
the preferred style of divine monarchs
as it served as a kind of propaganda
to sell the old regime notion
that some were born to rule
and others were born to be ruled.
When the emperor and his extended family
sat down to dinner, they ate here.
This is the more casual table setting --
with just your basic silverware.
For more formal state dinners
they brought out the golden ware.
Each drink came with a proper glass...
and spittoons always go on the left.
Six centuries of Habsburgs ruled from here
including Maria Theresa in the late 1700s.
She was famous for having 16 children
and cleverly marrying many of them
into Europe's various royal families
in order to expand her empire.
Today's palace is furnished as it was in the 1800s
from the age of Maria's great-great-grandson,
Emperor Franz Joseph.
He ruled for 68 years
and was the embodiment of the Habsburg Empire
in its final decades.
Franz Joseph had a stern upbringing
that instilled in him a powerful sense of duty.
This was Franz Joseph in 1915,
when he was 85 years old.
Wearing his uniform to the very end,
he never understood what a dinosaur
his monarchy was becoming,
and he didn't think it was strange
that so few of his subjects actually spoke German.
Still, every citizen had the right
to meet with the emperor here in the audience room.
Famously energetic and dedicated to duty,
Franz Joseph stood at this tall table
to meet with the commoners.
They'd come to ask him a favor
or tell him "thanks" for something.
Standing kept things moving.
On the table,
you can read a partial list of 56 appointments
he had on January 3, 1910.
The emperor presided over cabinet meetings
in this room.
He ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
so, Hungarians sat at these meetings.
The paintings on the wall
show the military defeat
of a popular Hungarian uprising...
Not too subtle.
Franz Joseph nurtured an image
of being Spartan and a very hard worker --
this is his famous no-frills iron bed
and portable washstand.
While he had a typical emperor's share of mistresses,
his dresser was always well-stocked
with portraits of his wife,
the Empress Elisabeth... or Sissi.
Elisabeth --
Franz Joseph's mysterious, narcissistic,
and beautiful wife, is in vogue these days.
In the palace, you'll learn of her fairy tale existence --
her escapes, dieting mania, and chocolate bills.
Sissi's hard-earned tiny waist
was 21 inches around at age 50...
after giving birth to 4 children.
Her main goals in life
seem to have been preserving her beautiful empress image,
maintaining her Barbie doll figure,
and tending to her cascading hair.
Here in her bedroom,
servants worked two hours a day on Sissi's famous hair.
She'd exercise on this.
Her bathroom was equipped with a huge tub --
the finest anywhere --
which rested on the first linoleum floor in Vienna,
installed in 1888.
In spite of severe dieting and fanatic exercise,
age took its toll.
After turning 30, she allowed no more portraits
and was seen in public only behind a gentle fan.
In 1898, while visiting Geneva, in Switzerland,
Empress Elisabeth was assassinated
by an Italian anarchist.
Sissi has often been compared with Princess Diana
because of her beauty,
her bittersweet life, and her tragic death.
When you visit Vienna,
it's easy to get caught up
in the growing legend of Empress Elisabeth.
For maximum imperial Bavarian grandeur, tour the Residenz.
This was the palace of the Wittelsbach family,
who ruled Bavaria for more than 700 years.
Like so many of Munich's architectural treasures,
it was destroyed in World War II
and rebuilt since.
To meet the duke,
all official guests had to pass through this gallery
lined with 700 years of Wittelsbach portraits.
Always trying to substantiate the family claim to power,
they included the great charlemagne
as an honorary family member.
The paintings are scarred by knife marks.
In the final months of World War II
when allied bombs were imminent,
Nazi leaders gave the hasty order
to slice each portrait out of its frame
and hide them away.
The Wittelsbachs were always trying
to keep up with the Habsburgs, their Austrian imperial rivals.
And this long string of ceremonial rooms
was basically all for show.
The exuberant decor and furniture is from the 1700s,
Rococo.
And of course, the Wittelsbach family had their own porcelain
made for the palace.
With all the mirrors, it's porcelain forever.
So, you know, the whole palace was really for showing off
and imagine the duke bringing some of his most noble guests
in here with all these miniatures in here,
some even painted with just one-hair brushes.
That was really a sensation in those days.
So these were copies of all the great masters.
Copies of the best paintings.
The palace ballroom was decorated
with ancient Roman statues.
The Wittelsbachs, like other European royals,
collected and displayed busts of emperors,
strongly implying a connection between them and the Caesars.
The palace treasury shows off a thousand years
of Wittelsbach knickknacks and Bavarian regalia,
the inspiration for so many fairy-tale crowns.
Small, mobile altars allowed kings to pack light
and still have a focus for their worship
while on the road.
This crucifix, carved from ivory, is exquisite.
This reliquary, made in 1640,
shows St. George killing the dragon.
It sparkles with over 2,000 precious stones.
You can almost hear the dragon hissing.
It was designed to contain the relics of St. George.
The palace also came with a royal garden.
Today it's the realm of everyday people
rather than kings, dukes, and counts.
Würzburg was the capital of the German state of Franconia.
In the 1700s, it was ruled was a prince-bishop.
He exercised both secular and religious authority,
and this grand palace was his home.
Opulent as a German Versailles,
the prince-bishop's Residence is the main attraction of Würzburg.
Imagine VIP guests arriving for lavish parties.
Met here by the prince-bishop,
they'd glide gracefully up this elegant stairway,
enjoying a grand fresco as it opens up overhead.
Dating from about 1750
and by the Venetian master Tiepolo,
it illustrates the greatness of Europe
with Würzburg at its center.
The hero is the esteemed prince-bishop,
honored by a host of Greek gods affirming his rule.
Ringing the room are allegories of the four continents,
each with a woman on an animal
and celebrating Würzburg
as the center of the civilized world.
America, desperately uncivilized,
sits naked with feathers in her hair on an alligator
among severed heads and a cannibal barbecue.
Africa lounges on a camel
in a land of trade and fantasy animals.
Asia rides her elephant in the birthplace
of Christianity, marked by crosses.
Europe is the center of high culture,
and Lady Culture herself points her brush not at Rome,
but at Würzburg.
The adjacent Imperial Hall is a fine example of Baroque --
harmony, symmetry, light, and mirrors.
Its ceiling is also by Tiepolo.
Typical of the Baroque movement,
he was a master of three-dimensional illusion,
and he'd heighten the illusion
with some fun tricks.
Notice how 3-D legs and other objects
dangle out of the 2-D frame.
The art, like nearly all art of that day,
was propaganda, paid for and serving
either the State or the Church.
In this case, it's both.
Here, the Holy Roman Emperor bestows upon
the bishop of Franconia the secular title of prince.
The bishop, now the prince-bishop,
touches the emperor's scepter, performing an oath of loyalty.
From this point onward, the prince-bishop wears
two very powerful hats at the same time.
A string of splendid rooms
evolve from fancy Baroque to fancier Rococo.
It all leads to the 18th-century Mirror Cabinet.
This was where the prince-bishop showed off his amazing wealth.
It features kilos of gold leaf, lots of exotic Asian influence,
and eye-popping extravagance.
As for the commoners,
we were finally allowed inside this glorious palace
about two centuries later.
The palaces of the imperial Habsburg family
still create a buzz.
The Royal family wintered downtown in their Hofburg palace
and they summered here at the Schönbrunn Palace.
Among Europe's grandiose palaces,
only Schönbrunn rivals Versailles.
It's big, with over 1,400 rooms.
But don't worry, only 40 are shown to the public.
While the exterior is baroque, the favorite style
of divine monarchs in the 17th century,
much of the interior was finished under Maria Theresa
in rococo, the frillier
"let them eat cake" style that followed.
The chandeliers are either are of Bohemian crystal
or of hand-carved wood, shiny with gold leaf.
This one was lit by 72 candles.
Maria Theresa, who ruled in the late 1700s,
was the only woman to officially run the Habsburg Empire
in that family's six-century reign.
She was a strong and effective empress,
famous as the mother
of 16 children,
most of whom survived to adulthood.
Imagine that the most powerful woman in Europe
was either pregnant or had a newborn
for over half of her forty-year reign.
The original practitioner of "make love, not war,"
Maria Theresa expanded her empire while avoiding wars
by cleverly marrying her children
into other royal families.
During her reign, the rest of Europe
recognized Austria as a great power.
Her rival, the Prussian emperor, said,
"when at last the Habsburgs get a great man,
it's a woman."
In room after luxurious room, the palace heralds
the story of a powerful family.
Frescoes in the grand ballroom were propaganda,
the good life under Maria Theresa.
A contemporary of George Washington
but worlds apart politically,
she presides like the divine monarch she was
over a vast multi-ethnic empire at peace.
Tuscany, with bottles of good Chianti,
the Netherlands, with the wild sea,
Hungarians with their Magyar hats and animals
were all part of her realm in about 1750.
There was peace, but only though strength.
This fresco shows off her state-of-the-art military.
Her infantry moves forward in alternating lines,
firing and loading
with a horrifying speed and efficiency.
A walk through the imperial garden,
now overrun with commoners, celebrates the evolution
of our society from autocracy to democracy.
It's been nearly a century
since the last emperor checked out,
and if access to once out-of-bounds royal gardens
is any measure,
the people are doing quite well.