Vienna Hofburg - Imperial Apartments, Sisi Museum, Silver Collection

Elisabeth, who has written poetry since her youth, increasingly uses her romantic versifying as a means of escape. She worships Homer, and writes numerous poems inspired by her great idol, the German poet Heinrich Heine, which reveal not only her disappointment, melancholy and longings but also her misanthropy and increasing isolation. She begins to identify with Titania, the fairy queen from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In order to please his wife, Franz Joseph even has her bedroom at the Hermes Villa in the Lainzer Tiergarten in Vienna, which she calls “Titania’s enchanted castle”, decorated with scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.www.hofburg-wien.at | Download Tour-Guide (PDF)© by Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.