Sissi Museum

The Sissi Museum is one of the most interesting museums in the city of Hofburg, dedicated to the former Empress of Austria - Amalia Eugenia Elizabeth (people - Sissi). The beautiful, beloved Empress has long been a cult figure of Austria. The museum was opened on April 24, 2005, the 150th anniversary of the wedding of Emperor Franz Joseph I and Bavarian Princess Elizabeth. The museum can be viewed simultaneously with the Imperial Apartments and the Palace Silver Museum.

The Sissi Museum is located on the second floor of the Baroque Imperial Palace. In these six halls, the life of the Empress is recreated, starting from her youth in Bavaria. The author of the concept of the museum, Professor Rolf Langenfass, deliberately abandoned the common clichés and cliches and relied on the “staging of feelings”, an emotional approach in the depiction of myth and reality.

The museum reveals to visitors the history of the hectic life of the legendary Empress, from a carefree childhood in Bavaria, who marveled at all his engagement to the Austrian Emperor, to her assassination in Geneva in 1898.

There are many documents that testify to Elizabeth’s numerous travels in Europe. In addition to personal belongings and the famous portraits of the beautiful Empress, today the museum presents a large number of different items for the first time exhibited for review. These are the restored wedding dress, gloves and fans, the reconstruction of the luxurious palace carriage owned by the Empress, a posthumous mask. The expositions of the museum acquaint visitors with the fate of this unusual and outstanding personality, the “first beauty of Europe” and the “unhappy Empress”.