Sisi and Vienna are one
Sisí was one of the first characters to receive a cult of personality from him, a celebrity that aroused fascination before the coated paper press became widespread. The legend of him is so strong that he resists constant attempts at demystification. Because despite the films in which the beautiful and candid Romy Schneider interpreted her life in the most cakey and crinoline way possible (years later Visconti had the wisdom to choose the same actress for the already mature twilight Sisí in his film Ludwig), the reality of the empress's life was blacker than pink: locked in a world she abhorred , she married to a husband whom she soon stopped loving, with a mother-in-law who cordially detested her and took away any ascendancy over her children, at the head of a dying empire and doomed to perpetual dissatisfaction.
Actually, there are many classic romance novel elements in her life, but The happy ending was missing. We review the conclusions drawn from her visit to the Hofburg among showcases with silk gloves and silverware.
The Hofburg Imperial Palace in Vienna
1) She was a beauty and she had great hair:
In Hofburg some of the best known portraits of Isabel are preserved, especially those in which she wears an abundant mane whose washing her took an entire day and whose weight of her gave him chronic back pain . Despite having good material herself, her wedding trousseau included 16 wigs and feathered headbands, including the wig she wore when her cousin Francisco José, who was actually going to marry her sister Nené (family nicknames are a separate case) had a crush on her.
2) she was very unhappy:
In the museum there is a note from the empress about her romance and her subsequent wedding with Francisco José that says: "For a few days of madness, a lifetime of misery" . Certainly marrying an emperor was not the worst fate for a 19th-century Central European princess, but Sisí's childhood, raised by an eccentric, bohemian father in the wild, had not made her the kind of person capable of acclimatizing to the ultra-rigid Viennese court. It was precisely that clash of her free-spirited sensibility with her reality that makes her so attractive even today.
Also, she was unlucky. As a result of the death of one of her daughters, she was plunged into a perpetual depression; she ended up de facto separated from her husband and a series of unfortunate events (his son Rudolf, heir to the throne, committed suicide accompanied by his mistress Maria Vetsera; his favorite cousin Louis II drowned in a lake, it is not known whether on his own initiative or by force; his sister Sofia was burned to death in a fire in a pavilion in charity in Paris; his cousin Maximiliano undertook an adventure as emperor in Mexico that would end with him being shot and with his crazy wife...) of her were accompanying her during her maturity until her tragic death.
Hofburg preserves the memories of Sisi
3) She was a passionate athlete:
Ahead of her time in so many things, Sisi took great care of her figure and she fought throughout her life not to exceed 50 kilos and keep her waist circumference at 45 centimeters . In his private rooms in the palace, several of the devices he used in his gymnastic routine are exhibited, among them some trellises and rings very similar to those of any current gym (among the various relics, Sisí's toilet is also shown, so that we can relax imagining her imperial ass on him). She also loved horseback riding and with maturity she became an unrepentant fan of hiking in the nineteenth century, giving herself to walks of up to eight hours that left her long-suffering companions exhausted.
4) she was obsessed with her beauty:
In addition to the issue of weight and gymnastics, she dedicated a lot of care to her face, and when time passed she did her thing she forbade them to photograph her again. In Hofburg they show some pretty bad rolleras photographs of Sisí on horseback of her covering her face with a fan or covering herself with a black veil.
5) she was a pertinacious traveler:
From the beginning of her reign she strongly identified with Hungary (something not very appropriate for the visible head of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), and she frequently traveled to the country, committing herself to the cause of Hungarian independence. Years later, Elizabeth became a kind of fugitive empress who, first with the excuse of improving her health and then fully assuming the breakup of her marriage, she devoted herself to sailing the Mediterranean on her yacht or spending hunting seasons in England and Scotland . He visited Elche, Funchal, built himself a Greek-style villa in Corfu (the Aquileon) until he met his death in the form of an attack in Geneva. Hofburg dedicates an entire room to the assassination of the empress on the shores of Lake Geneva. The Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni, frustrated because the victim he expected had not come to Switzerland, found out that Elizabeth of Austria was there and, during a walk, he faked a crash in which he took the opportunity to stab her with a file. Not even the empress herself was aware of her until she fainted from her, they put her on a ship and when they untied her corset they discovered that she had been stabbed through the heart of it. It was the absurd and tragic ending that was missing to complete his story.
A street in Vienna with Hofburg in the background