★★★★★ 5.0
Discover
Schönbrunn Zoo
That octagonal pavilion straight ahead has been beating at the heart of something revolutionary for over 260 years. Emperor Franz I built it in 1759 as his breakfast room while keeping exotic animals exclusively for the royal family. In 1770, the first Indian elephant arrived. By 1781, predators—wolves and bears—showed up. Around 1800, polar bears, tigers, and kangaroos joined the collection. Here's the mind-blowing part: this zoo opened to regular Viennese in 1778, making it the world's first public zoo. Then in 1828, an Egyptian viceroy sent a giraffe. Vienna went absolutely giraffe-crazy—fashions, perfumes, even musical compositions. The city had never seen anything like it. What separates this place from every other old zoo is what happened next. In 1906, the first elephant calf was born inside a European zoo right here. Then in 2013, scientists did something radical: successfully bred an elephant using artificial insemination with frozen sperm. You're walking through 273 years of continuous animal innovation, all inside a UNESCO World Heritage palace garden.
Did You Know?
- :fact: The Schönbrunn Zoo was founded in 1752 as a royal menagerie for Emperor Francis I Stephen of Lorraine, making it the world’s oldest continuously operating zoo. Originally built to showcase the Habsburgs’ wealth and global reach, it was opened to the public in 1779—decades before most European zoos, reflecting Enlightenment ideals of public education and access to nature.
- :fact: At the heart of the zoo stands an octagonal pavilion, originally designed in 1759 as a social venue for the imperial family. Painted with scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this baroque gem still serves as a restaurant today, blending art, history, and gastronomy in a unique setting.
- :fact: Schönbrunn Zoo is one of only 27 zoos worldwide to house giant pandas, and it made history in 2013 by being the first to successfully breed an elephant using artificial insemination with frozen sperm—a milestone in conservation science.