The palace was built and decorated over many centuries, but most of what you see today was shaped in the 1700s. The rooms inside are covered in gold leaf, silk wallpaper, sparkling chandeliers and beautiful paintings. The most famous room is the Great Gallery — a long hall filled with golden light — where grand concerts and celebrations were held.
Young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart performed for the royal family in Schönbrunn Palace when he was only six years old. He played the piano so brilliantly that the royal children were amazed. It was one of his very first public performances.
Behind the palace is a huge garden — one of the largest palace gardens in Europe — with perfectly trimmed hedges, splashing fountains and long gravel paths. At the top of a hill in the garden stands a monument called the Gloriette, which looks like a stone arch. From there you can see the whole of Vienna spread out below.
The palace also has one of the world's oldest zoos, called Tiergarten Schönbrunn, which opened in 1752. It is still open today and is home to giant pandas, elephants and hundreds of other animals — making Schönbrunn a place where you can visit a palace and a zoo on the same day.