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.
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 center 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 figh.
