Vienna Hofburg - Imperial Apartments, Sisi Museum, Silver Collection

With time, Elisabeth learns to defend her interests at court and begins to lead a life in line with her own ideas. She now does exactly what she wants and increasingly refuses to fulfil her offical obligations as empress. Franz Joseph and Elisabeth have become estranged. Elisabeth finds the lure of the infinite ocean irresistible and dreams of soaring free like a seagull: I am a seagull, from no land... In order to distract herself Elisabeth goes on long journeys and seeks out refuges, places where she can live in freedom. These include the Hungarian chateau of Gödöllö near Budapest, the Hermesvilla in the Lainzer Tiergarten on the outskirts of Vienna as well as the Achilleion on the Greek island of Corfu. Here she has a magnificent villa built in Pompeian style and named after her favourite figure from Greek mythology, furnishing it with valuable antiques. But only a short time afterwards the increasingly restless empress loses interest in the Achilleion too and has it put up for sale. In the