Austrian National Library

The Austrian National Library's Prunksaal, the State Hall, is the Baroque core of the former imperial court library, built between 1723 and 1726 by Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach, son of the architect who designed the Karlskirche.

Charles VI commissioned it to hold the library of Prince Eugene of Savoy, purchased after the prince's death, and to project the dynasty's learning alongside its military power.

The ceiling fresco, painted by Daniel Gran, depicts the apotheosis of Charles VI as a patron of the arts and sciences, and was later restored by Franz Anton Maulbertsch after damage from a lightning-caused fire.

The hall now anchors the Austrian National Library, the country's largest library, whose wider collection spans manuscripts, maps, papyri and a globe museum housed in adjoining rooms of the Hofburg.

The oval central hall runs 77.7 metres end to end under Gran's dome fresco, flanked by two wings of floor-to-ceiling walnut bookshelves holding roughly 200,000 volumes from the historic court collection, arranged as they were in the eighteenth century rather than by modern classification.

Marble statues of Habsburg rulers by Paul and Peter Strudel stand along the hall, and a pair of large Coronelli globes, made for Louis XIV and acquired by Eugene of Savoy, sit at the centre under the dome.

A changing display case in the hall rotates rare manuscripts and early printed books from the library's holdings, since the shelved volumes themselves are not accessible to browse.

Thirty to forty-five minutes covers the Prunksaal itself at a walking pace with time to read the display cases.

A visitor combining it with the adjoining Globe Museum or the Esperanto Museum, both reached from the same Hofburg wing, should allow an extra 30 minutes per additional room, since each has a separate small collection rather than an extension of the main hall.

National libraries in Vienna have traditionally kept one closing day in the working week, commonly Monday; current opening days and hours for the Prunksaal are Not recorded here and should be confirmed on the library's own site before a visit.

Weekday mornings are quieter than midday, when tour groups moving through the Hofburg complex tend to arrive in clusters, and the hall's display cases are easier to read closely before the room fills.

The Prunksaal is ticketed separately from both the Hofburg's imperial apartments and from the library's research reading rooms, which are free to enter for reference use.

Current Prunksaal admission pricing is Not recorded here; it should be checked on the library's own site rather than assumed to match a general Hofburg combination ticket, since the two are sold separately, and a reduced rate for the adjoining Globe Museum is sometimes bundled with the main hall's ticket.

The entrance sits on Josefsplatz inside the Hofburg complex, a short walk from U3 Herrengasse station.

Tram lines 1, 2, 71 and D along the Ringstrasse stop within a few minutes' walk, and the Hofburg's other entrances from Michaelerplatz and the Volksgarten side all lead to Josefsplatz through the palace's internal courtyards, so a visitor arriving from any direction of the inner city reaches the hall on foot without a second transfer.

The Prunksaal ticket is separate from every other Hofburg attraction, and visitors regularly arrive expecting one combined pass to cover it, which it does not.

The hall is a single continuous room with no alternate route around a tour group, so a coach party can fill it for several minutes at a time.

Tripods and flash are generally restricted to protect the historic bindings and the fresco, and some display cases prohibit photography outright regardless of the general hall policy; loud conversation also carries unusually far under the dome.

The gilded shelving and the dome fresco read best at midday, when light from the hall's south-facing windows reaches furthest into the space; a wide shot from either end of the oval captures the full sweep of shelving and statues in one frame.

The Coronelli globes under the dome are a strong detail shot on their own, since their scale is easy to lose in a wide interior photograph of the whole hall, and a low angle from beside them emphasises their size against the surrounding shelving.