A front door finished too late

The curved wing in front of you, the green copper dome, the two bellowing fountains. This is the ceremonial front door of the Hofburg, and it is far younger than it looks.

Fischer von Erlach drew it in 1726. Then nobody built it for more than a century and a half. The old court theatre stood in the way until 1888, and the dome was finished only in 1893.

So for almost all of her life this square did not look like this. Elisabeth knew it as scaffolding and a building site, and the finished version for barely five years.

Her rooms are behind that gate. Walk through the arch into the courtyard called In der Burg.