The Gloriette terrace and the Schönbrunn parterre

Schönbrunn's park opens at 6:30 in the morning, long before the palace, and that first hour is the whole point. The parterre runs from the palace's garden front to the Neptune fountain, a quarter-mile of gravel, clipped hedges and flower beds with the Gloriette on its hill closing the view; from the fountain the palace fills the frame, and from the Gloriette's colonnade the parterre, the palace and the city behind it stack up in three planes.

The light comes low from the east across the parterre at that hour and turns the Gloriette's stone honey-coloured; by nine the gravel walks carry the first tour groups and by eleven the frame has a hundred people in it. Late afternoon is the second window, with the sun behind the Gloriette and the palace lit from the west, but never as empty.

The park and the Gloriette hill are free; the Gloriette's rooftop viewing platform, the palace rooms and the maze are ticketed, and the estate has its own rules on tripods, larger productions and drones that change — check the current conditions before the day. The zigzag paths up to the Gloriette take ten minutes, and there is a step-free route on the eastern side.

In winter the beds are bare and the fountains off, but the geometry is stronger for it, and snow on the parterre is the rarest and best version of the frame — usually January, never guaranteed. From mid-November the Christmas market fills the courtyard in front of the palace.