page_title: Eggenberg Palace, Graz
section_title: Scheme
hierarchical_section_title: Eggenberg Palace, Graz / History / Scheme
caption_attribution_description: English: Prince w:Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg
context_page_description: Eggenberg Palace in Graz, is the most significant Baroque palace complex in the Austrian province of Styria. With its preserved accouterments, the extensive scenic gardens, as well as some special collections from the Universalmuseum Joanneum housed in the palace and surrounding park, Schloss Eggenberg ranks among the most valuable cultural treasures of Austria. Eggenberg Palace is situated at an elevation of 381 meters on the Western edge of the city. Its architectural design and the still visible imprint of centuries of history continue to bear witness to the vicissitude and patronage of the one-time mightiest dynasty in Styria, the House of Eggenberg.
  In 2010, the significance of Schloss Eggenberg was recognized with an expansion to the listing of the Graz Historic Old Town among the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites.
  Surrounded by walls, with a huge portal facing West, the palace is located in the Eggenberg district of Graz and can be reached by tram line. The northern corner of the palace grounds features the Planetary Garden and Lapidarium of Roman stonework as well as the entrance to the new Archeology Museum, which houses the Cult Wagon of Strettweg.
context_section_description: With his new residence, Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, the mental inspiration behind the complex program, realized an architectural concept deeply influenced by the humanist notions of magic as the praxis of natural philosophy and of the rational order of the world. Above all, astronomy, astrology and alchemy were major components of the education of a worldly prince. In addition to representing the prince's new rank, all these aspects flowed into the vision of the new building as a symbol of the cosmos as a well-organized, hierarchical, logico-mathematically explicable system.
  Schloss Eggenberg relies on the Gregorian calendar as a basis for this constructed universe. The palace has 365 exterior windows, one for each day of the year.  Of these, 52 are on the 24 rooms of the piano nobile representing the weeks of one year.  The 2nd storey contains these 24 state rooms in a ring-shaped arrangement which symbolize the hours in a single day. Every floor in the building bares exactly 31 rooms counting the maximum number of days in a calendar month.  The 52 windows of the piano nobile with the 8 windows of the Planetary Room make a total of 60, representing both the number of seconds in a minute and the minutes in an hour.
  The palace is erected on a rectangular plan with the geometrical center being formed by the middle tower with its Gothic chapel. On each corner there is a tower-like rise. Each of these corner-towers represents one of the four seasons and the outside corner of each is aimed exactly in a cardinal direction.
caption: Copper engraving with portrait of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, 17th century
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