iState Hall of the Austrian National Library (Prunksaal)Innere Stadt
The Imperial Family. Private Life and Duty at the Court of Francis II/I
Letters, gifts and portraits reveal the household of Emperor Francis II/I and Empress Maria Teresa behind the idyll, under dynastic pressure and the threat of war.
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Preview: written before the show opened
The Library's press image for this show is a print of Emperor Francis II/I with his family at Laxenburg in 1807: the happy, almost middle-class household the court liked to show. The Library's own preview says that picture was mostly staged for propaganda.
The show sets the idyll against what happened: the family's repeated flights during the wars with Napoleon, the switch from Holy Roman Emperor to Emperor of Austria, dynastic pressure and disappointed expectations. The evidence is personal, letters and gifts passed within the family, many shown for the first time. Empress Marie Therese used shared amusements and presents to stage some harmony for children raised in isolation in the Hofburg, and summer stays gave the family rare moments of real happiness.
You see it inside the Prunksaal itself, on the standard State Hall ticket: €12, free for under-19s, open until 21:00 on Thursdays. The curators' tours on 4 and 10 December are for members of the Library's Friends society only.
Editor's pick
Letters, gifts and portraits from the household of Emperor Francis II/I and Empress Maria Teresa, showing family life under dynastic pressure and the threat of war.
Look for
The family at Laxenburg, 1807
The emperor surrounded by his wife and children at Laxenburg, in Franz Wolf's 1835 print after a drawing by Johann Nepomuk Hoechle, the image the Library chose for the show.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
With kids
Under-19s enter free.
Also at State Hall of the Austrian National Library (Prunksaal)
On now nearby
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Image credits
8
- The Imperial Family. Private Life and Duty at the Court of Francis II/IÖsterreichische Nationalbibliothek
- Otto Meets AlbertinaCourtesy of Albertina
- Picasso - Bacon: What It Feels Like to Be Human© Succession Picasso / Bildrecht, Vienna 2026, © Foto: bpk/Nationalgalerie, SMB, Museum Berggruen/ Jens Ziehe
- Her Story: Women Artists of the AlbertinaCourtesy of Albertina
- State Hall of the Austrian National Library (Prunksaal)Mirej / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT
- Theatermuseum (Palais Lobkowitz)Gryffindor / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5
- AlbertinaC.Stadler/Bwag, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Jewish Museum Vienna (Jüdisches Museum Wien)Sonja Bachmayer / Jewish Museum Vienna, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0