This magnificent but little-known mansion is only tram ride away to Pötzleinsdorf, one of Vienna’s outer suburbs.

Built in 1808 by the banker Johann Jakob Geymüller, it is a true gem of the Biedermeier period, demonstrating an elegant pastiche of Gothic, Arabesque and Indian motifs. In the late 1880s, Isidor Mautner, a leading textile industrialist in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, acquired the mansion and adjoining gardens. The Mautner family lived here until the “Anschluss” in 1938, when the Nazis seized Geymüller Schlössl and put up its furnishings for public auction.

The Austrian state acquired the mansion in 1948, granting Austrian collector Franz Sobek life tenancy of the estate. In exchange, Sobek made a bequest to the state of his precious collection of old Viennese clocks and Biedermeier furniture and arranged for its permanent display in the mansion.

In the 1960s, Geymüller Schlössl was ceded to the MAK (Austrian Museum of Applied Art). The interior was painstakingly renovated in recent years and furnished to recapture the spirit of the Biedermeier. In the gardens, installations by contemporary artists James Turrell and Hubert Schmalix give a welcome relief to the at times heavy Biedemeyer aesthetic.