SCHONBRUNN, Park - Zoo

Schönbrunn Zoological Park is preceded by three pavilions that make up the Palm House, the largest of its kind in Europe.

The origins of this popular zoo, the oldest in the world, date back to the mid-eighteenth century, when Emperor Franz Joseph I, a natural science enthusiast, had a menagerie built, featuring thirteen cages arranged radially around a central octagonal pavilion, where the imperial couple occasionally had breakfast.

This initial core soon proved inadequate to contain the different animal and plant species the garden was quickly enriched with, either as a result of expeditions to the East Indies sponsored by the emperor, or of purchases or donations. New cages were thus added in the nineteenth century, and in the early twentieth century, the zoological area was expanded within the castle grounds to host a record 3,470 animals, belonging to more than 700 species....