Pimp my carriage: How to ride in style like Austria's famed emperor Franz Joseph

People would line the streets, hoping to throw petitions and protest letters into his carriage, knowing it was the only way to get the emperor's ear

By AFP

Published: Tue 24 Dec 2024, 10:25 AM

Last updated: Tue 24 Dec 2024, 10:26 AM

A long-lost carriage once used almost daily by Austria's longest-serving monarch Franz Joseph for his commute from the Schoenbrunn palace to his office in central Vienna has gone on display after an epic renovation.

With tourists flocking to Vienna for Christmas, the carefully restored vehicle can be seen at the Imperial Carriage Museum, which houses one of the world's most important collections.

"People usually saw him in exactly this type of vehicle, and the emperor in his beloved everyday carriage became a popular subject of postcards and paintings," Mario Doeberl, historian and museum curator, told AFP.

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People would line the streets, hoping to throw petitions and protest letters into his carriage, knowing it was the only way to get the emperor's ear, Doeberl said.

But his well-known commute also made him a potential assassination target and police also patrolled to make sure nobody came close.

The head of the Habsburg dynasty had access to about 600 vehicles including sleighs and sedan chairs.

After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1918, only 100 of the most valuable vehicles went into the Imperial carriage museum which opened four years later.

The royal carriage collection in Paris -- once the most important centre of production -- was mostly destroyed in the French revolution.

The emperor's everyday carriage was thought to have been lost until it resurfaced at a stud farm in the 1990s and was painstakingly restored after a 20-year-long fight for funding.

Museum conservator Matthias Manzini was one of a handful of experts who brought the carriage back to life.

The run-down, rusty vehicle, which had been repainted, was barely recognisable when it first entered the collection.

The carriage has gone on show again more than a century after one of the world's longest-serving leaders last sat in it.

"A carriage is a moving work of art, and many different craftsmen are involved, including blacksmiths, sculptors, carpenters and architects," Manzini told AFP.

"These vehicles are no longer in use, but back then they were the most elaborate, most expensive ones -- similar to a Rolls Royce nowadays," said the 37-year-old conservator.

His task is not only to preserve the carriages, but also to find out how they were built and embellished in the first place.

Armed with a gilding brush made from the tail of a squirrel and gold leaf, Manzini is restoring the wheels of an imperial gala coach once used for coronations and weddings.

The museum's most valuable carriage -- the gilded Imperial state coach -- was once hauled across the Alps to Milan and taken to Budapest for the 1867 coronation of Empress Elisabeth. But it nearly became a victim of conflict.

Just a few months before the end of World War II, in February 1945, US planes bombed the Schoenbrunn palace, burying the carriages under debris.

The most daunting carriage is the collection's jet-black hearse, which caused a stir when it last rolled through the streets of Vienna in 1989.

Built in 1876, the neo-baroque hearse was used for five funerals, including Empress Elisabeth, Emperor Franz Joseph and Austria's last empress Zita.

"It was controversial to use this museum piece again -- nobody could guarantee that a strap wouldn't rip, which would have been highly unpleasant for reasons of piety, but also dangerous for the hearse itself," Doeberl told AFP.

Fabian Daubner, 24, who was visiting Vienna for a few days, said he was awestruck by some of the carriages' huge wheels which are almost "as big as" a human being.