Antique & Vintage Postcards

Turn-of-the-century collotype of the Hermesvilla — the "pleasure palace" Emperor Franz Joseph built for Empress Elisabeth in the Lainzer Tiergarten outside Vienna, and which she almost never used. The neo-Renaissance facade is all colonnaded verandas, ornate tile panels, and mansard towers; the formal garden in front holds a Hermes statue that gave the villa its name. Designed by Karl von Hasenauer from 1882 and decorated by Hans Makart and a young Gustav Klimt, it was one of the most lavishly appointed private residences in the Habsburg empire — a gilded cage that Sisi, relentlessly restless, largely refused to inhabit. Photographer Josef Löwy was Vienna's preeminent court photographer of the era; the "Nachdruck verboten" notice is his. The undivided back format dates this card to c.1898–1902, the earliest years of the picture postcard.