The Emperor’s House

Museum and bourgeois apartment

The house at Number 17 on Baden’s Main Square has been known as the “Kaiserhaus” since 1813. This is the year Emperor Francis I has the house bought up to be his personal summer residence.

The land originally belongs to the monastery of Augustinian Hermits founded in 1285. At the beginning of the 19th century the building comes into the hands of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy, who has it remodelled and extended by French star architect Charles de Moreau and more or less determines the modern-day appearance of the Kaiserhaus as an elegant but modest, Neoclassical house.

The devastating town fire of 1812 reduces what has been the summer domicile of Emperor Francis I, the Augustinian monastery, to ashes. Conveniently, Prince Esterházy not only owns a house in the area but owes the Emperor money.

So they kill two birds with one stone. Emperor Francis gives the building, which suffers light damage in the fire, a basic overhaul and moves in. He is unwilling to make any further adaptations – the protests of his wife Maria Ludovica, who finds the new summer residence inadequate, fall on deaf ears.

After Francis’s death in 1835, neither Emperor Ferdinand I nor Emperor Franz Joseph frequent Baden. It is not until 1917 that imperial flair returns. But this time in a different way. Emperor Charles I, the last monarch of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, relocates the top command of the Imperial Army to Baden. The spa town becomes the military centre of the monarchy and a special identity card is required to be here.

From the point of view of world history these 2 years are by far the most significant for Baden’s Kaiserhaus. It is here and not in Vienna’s Hofburg that decisions are made which ultimately lead to the defeat and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

No other building unifies high-quality architectonics and a great history quite like the Emperor’s House, which has belonged to the municipality of Baden since 2008. It is the symbol of Baden’s past as a cure resort of international standing and since the demolition of Weilburg Castle in the 1960s the most important Habsburg monument in town.

Image: Exterior view of Baden’s Kaiserhaus © Wolf Photos, GG Tourism Baden