The ‘Apothecary’s Wing‘ of the Schoenbrunn Palace was created in the latter half of the 18th century when the building was transformed and extended from a hunting lodge into a summer palace for Maria Theresia, which needed to be large enough to accommodate the entire court. Several groundplans of the palace from the 1760s show the Apothecary’s Wing, which today remains much as it was at that time.
It served primarily to accommodate the palace guardsmen, who were transferred in 1906 to modern quarters in a wing on the Ehrenhof (‘Court of Honour’). Among the uses to which the imperial authorities then put the vacated wing was to house the court apothecary, which served both the imperial family and the courtiers and staff. After the end of the Empire, the Schoenbrunn apothecary remained in the wing until 1976.
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