In which I finally get to photograph inside a Baroque palace and go a little nuts, part I

23.05.13

On Thursday we had short class periods to accommodate a trip to Schloss Eggenberg, a very impressive Baroque palace in Graz.  This palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We traveled together by tram to get to the palace, which is surrounded by gardens.  The plan was to spend some time exploring the gardens before taking a tour of the castle.  Here, Rex and Volker are paying for entrance to the grounds for the group.

This is the gate to the palace grounds looking from the inside out.

Beyond the gate is a road that leads straight to the entrance.

Obligatory catalpa tree photo for Austin as a thank you for lending me the camera.

So, did I mention the flock of peafowl that wander about the grounds?

Here's the front of the palace.  The third floor, which has the shutters open, is where the rooms which have been kept in their original condition are.   This floor was never wired for electricity, so all the chandeliers have real candles.  Towards the end of June there's a tour available at night where they actually light the candles which I'm thinking of doing.

I saw just enough peahens around to make the males act silly, as this fellow is demonstrating below.

Alas, she was unimpressed.

It wasn't too hard to find a peacock willing to shake his feathers at us.

The palace grounds feature several gardens, one of which is a rose garden situated on a hill with a little pavilion on top.  The roses are labeled for variety, year or century of origin, and the name of the person who cultivated it if known.

And then we'd come around a corner and find another peacock.

Here we are at the top of the rose hill.

The way down on the other side was a pretty little staircase.

I'm really not sure how they're capable of grooming all that tail.

Some of the students were headed in one direction and I tagged along to try to get everyone back to the castle at the right time.  Here's a pond I saw along the way.

The students found a playground and I gained favor by giving them a push.  This thing seemed like a lot of fun, though we couldn't figure out if it always required someone to set it in motion or if there was something they could do to self-propel it.

After the playground, we visited a planet-themed garden then began the tour.  That will have to wait for another post.