Architectural drawings from the Court Building Department

Apart from the homogenous block of the "Stosch Atlas", the Albertina’s architectural section holds another large group of drawings, covering more than 4,000 exhibits, which originated in the Court Building Department, which later, still under monarchic rule, became the State Building Department. The drawings themselves were kept in several of the royal and imperial archives, until 1918. Afterwards, they were handed, for the most part, to the Albertina. It was intended that by thus uniting the entire production of the drawing offices that had once been domiciled at the Vienna Court Building Department, it would be possible to provide a comprehensive documentation of the Habsburgian building activity between the years 1700 and 1918.

The topographical range of the Court Building Department drawings covers an area from Vienna via the Austrian provinces on to the former Habsburgian crown lands and finally, via the buildings erected by Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, even into far-away Central America. Further European countries, among them, Belgium, Germany, France, as well as Latvia and Russia, are represented by sheets from other imperial collections held at the Albertina.

Picture Gallery

Carl Schütz
Laxenburg, Palace and Park Grounds (“Waderlgarten”), bird’s-eye view, 1775-1780

Peter von Nobile
Vienna 1st District, Hofburg Palace, Outer Burg Gate, City Side, Perspective, 1824-1828

Ludwig Christian Friedrich Förster
"Project for the New Construction of the Stubenthor Gate in Vienna” (competition design entry), 1849

Paul Wilhelm Eduard Sprenger
Design for a Military Exercise and Industrial Exhibition Hall in Vienna, perspectival interior view, 1853

(Baron) Jean Nicolas Jadot
Vienna 1st District, Hofburg Palace, Conversion and New Construction Project, Court Library and Swiss Tract, section drawing