Take a tour if you have enough time. this is a very fancy place with a lot of interesting stories. It is surrounded by a large park with all kinds of animals.
The tour through the State Rooms are well worth the price. The Alte Gallery was also very good. The archaeology museum was a little weak, especially if you have visited other collections. If you collect coins, the collection there is a must-see. If time permits, a walk through the gardens is nice. A good restaurant is located just outside the east entrance..
A relaxing oasis for adults and kids.... Old trees + roses + rhododendron + all kind of animals.You should spend 2 hours at least to get the real feeling of the place.............
This Schloss was a short tram ride from our hotel. The gardens were lovely and we were amused by the many peacocks. We waited a while for our English speaking guide. She was well informed and very personable.However the rooms are dark and empty of furniture. We could get no feel for how people lived here.Each room had a unique ceiling painting but after three or so rooms our interst was waning.I attribute my 3 star review perhaps to being tired and to having visited many sites such as this.We are sorry we didn't opt for the Schwatzenegger Museum!!! We are fans and that would have been a one-of-kind visit.
The place to go for art is Schloss Eggenberg, which is on a tram ride from the centre, which is less trouble than it sounds. This is a fabulous seventeenth century country house. You need to take the tour, which goes around the 24 state rooms of the piano nobile. Much of this was painted by Hans Adam Weissenkircher, in stucco framing. Other rooms were decorated in the eighteenth century in rococo style. The English guide (an art history student) was very good at getting across the essentials (important given a lot of rooms were similar) but at the same time was good at responding to questions, which demonstrated that she was very knowledgeable. There is a cute little parasol seat on a mound in the garden, and lots of peacocks. There is also the museum of Graz area old master painters there, so one needs to allow plenty of time.
Beautiful gardens, amazing painting pictures, huge rooms are only a few aspect of this very interesting place.The guide explain you the whole history of the Palace, therefore I fully recommend to go for the pay tour, don't stay only in the gardens or you gonna miss several years of world history.If you were in Graz, Austria, don't miss it!
Catch tram 1 (€4.80 for a 24 hour ticket) from Jakominiplatz or Hauptplatz (If you are staying in the Old Town Centre). It takes around 10 - 15 minutes and one needs to stop at Schloss Eggenberg. Visiting the palace in February one can only walk around the Palace Park & Gardens (Entrance fee for an adult is €2 and it is open from 08:00 - 17:00) this is because between November to March the State Rooms are closed. This means that an hour or so is just enough to stroll along the park and gardens. One surprising find were the considerable amount of peacocks roaming around freely in these gardens.
This Schloss was the best one ever, in walking distance from Graz railway station. There was so much to see. I started with the English tour of the State rooms. The design of the house has an interesting history. After a short lunch break in the Pavilion I visited the art galery on the first floor where I saw the most perfectly preserved collection of medieaval paintings along with more up to date ones. 24 rooms in all. A walk across incredible gardens led me to the archeology museum and out into the planetary garden, The entry for me as a senior citizen was just 8.50 euros including all the museums and the state room tour, A really well spent day.
Schloss Eggenberg is rightly listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, but its location more or less at the end of the streetcar line means it gets light foot traffic, even though it's less than 30 mins. from downtown Graz. The castle is situated in huge, green park with lush gardens, lawns and wandering peacocks. When I turned out to be the only person signed up, I ended up getting a private tour of the castle rooms and the impressive art collection within for a song. In the summertime, the castle is one of the performance sites for the wonderful StyrArte music festival launched by the city's famous early music son, Nikolaus Harnoncourt. It is a place of quiet beauty, worth the effort to get to and explore.
Easily accessible by #1 tram from the main square (€4.8 for day pass, €2.10 for single trip, buy from machine in square). The guide spoke excellent English and gave a very informative and knowledgeable account of the 24 rooms in the tour in this majestic building. Senior concession available. Palace built for a wealthy confidant of Emperor Ferdinand II and is an expression of his position of power and world knowledge. The mechanisms of the heavens, world history, religion, humanist values are all depicted, as is the calendar (24 rooms, 52 doors, 365 windows etc). It is an astonishing place and must not be missed. The gardens are well kept and make for a peaceful walk.