apothecaries`court break catering celebration cocktail cocktail reception concert conference conference centre coonference centre courtyard dinner equipment event maria theresia meeting orangery garden presentation presention reception room franz joseph room franz stephan room habsburg room maria theresia room marie antoinette schönbrunn palace small gallery technology terrace white and gold room
The Apothecaries’ Wing
The Apothecaries’ Wing at Schönbrunn Palace was erected shortly after the middle of the 18th century in the course of the conversion of the palace from a hunting lodge to a royal residence. This enlargement of the palace complex to make it Maria Theresia’s summer residence also involved the addition of the outbuildings that extend towards Meidling and Hietzing and that ensured the provision of supplies to entire royal household.
A number of ground plans of Schönbrunn dating from 1760s and 1770s show the single-storey Apothecaries’ Wing extending to the Citron House and the Orangerie and largely identical in structure – with the exception of the room arrangement – with the building today.
According to plans from the 19th century, this wing accommodated inter alia the guards and the metal workshops, the courtyards being referred to as the metalwork and guards courtyards; stables, presumably for the mounted guards, adjoined the Citron House, which itself opened onto the Orangerie.
When the Guards Wing to the north east of the Parade Court by the entrance to the Palace was converted into modern accommodation for the guards in 1906, including the addition of a kitchen and sanitary facilities in the cellar, the Imperial Palace Administration used the now vacated wing to accommodate both catering facilities and the Court Apothecary, which until then had been located in the (presumably much smaller) Guards Wing.
The Court Apothecary was generally intended to supply not only the Imperial Family but also provide free medicine to the court employees. The Schönbrunn Apothecary continued in business long after the fall of the monarchy, until 1976, in the Apothecaries’ Wing, the eastern end of the Meidling outbuilding.
