The Hoffburg in Vienna
Home of a great empire

This is the complex where the Hapsburgs lived and worked. Extended family members included Franz Joseph, Marie Antoinette, the Empresses Maria Theresa and Marie-Louise... and half the monarchs of Europe over a period of about 500 years.

There was a Spanish branch of the Hapsburg family, too. Royal brides would travel from Vienna to Madrid to marry other Hapsburgs they'd never met and the bride in the next generation would travel back to Vienna -- for the same purpose. It kept the empire together but the inbreeding magnified their tendencies to inherit a huge, jutting jaw and large lower lip, as well as occasional cases of epilepsy and mental retardation.

Now the Hapsburg remains are spread throughout Vienna -- their hearts in vessels at one church, their entrails in vessels at St. Stephen's Cathedral and the rest in caskets in the crypt under the Augustine Church, which we also visited.

There were years of balls and galas and there were years when they killed and ate the palace cats because there was nothing else to eat. There were a few years where they gathered up all their jewels and left town to avoid the Turks -- and finally the empire fell, but the Hofberg still stands.

They seem to have saved most of their household treasures, too. We saw piles of china and silver as well as the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and reliquaries said to contain a piece of the True Cross, a tooth of St. John the Baptist, a thorn from the Crown of Thorns and various slivers and chunks of several minor saints. We even saw the tastefully-designed china vessels the family used in the absence of indoor plumbing.