Palais Pallavicini

Palais Pallavicini in Vienna, Austria, is an 18th-century neoclassical city palace erected under Habsburg rule. Its site long belonged to the local noble line of the Counts of Salm before passing into imperial possession in the mid-1500s, and the place subsequently played roles in both religious and aristocratic life in the city.

In the 16th century the property belonged to members of the Salm family; it was sold in 1559 to Emperor Ferdinand I and later came into the hands of his younger son. In the late 1500s a royal widow, the niece of that younger son and formerly queen of France, established a women’s royal abbey on the grounds in 1592 and served as its first abbess. That religious foundation continued until the reforms of Emperor Joseph II, who suppressed the abbey in 1782 and had the individual building tracts divided.

One portion of the former abbey plots was acquired by the banker Johann von Fries, who tore down the standing structures and had a new city palace erected in 1783–84. During the Fries ownership the house became a major cultural center: the family assembled a large picture gallery, a vast collection of copper engravings, a library of many thousands of books, and a notable sculpture collection, and they hosted concerts and evening gatherings in the principal reception rooms. After the collapse of the Fries banking house the family property changed hands and the art holdings were dispersed at auction.

The palace passed through further private owners in the nineteenth century. In 1828 it became the property of banker Georg Simon von Sina, and in 1842 it was sold to Alphons Pallavicini; his descendants retained the building as a family residence while letting much of its accommodation to others. In 1873 Markgraf Alexander Oswald Pallavicini carried out an extensive interior redecoration in a historicist manner, reshaping the staircase and the reception rooms so that most of the present interior ornament dates from that program. In the twentieth century the palace housed an exhibition of historic musical instruments from 1939 until wartime removals, and it also served as a venue for performances of intimate, period-style house music. The building appears in the film The Third Man, where it stands for the home of the character Harry Lime. Two Viennese institutions have since taken up parts of the complex, including a local racing club and, in the former stable, a well-known dance school.