State Hall

This guide to the State Hall in Vienna begins overhead, with the ceiling fresco where court painter Daniel Gran shows Emperor Charles the Sixth ascending into the sky, and traces how his library came to house someone else's collection. You'll hear about Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Habsburgs' warrior-collector whose volumes filled the hall's oval heart after his death in 1736. Look up at the walnut shelves and the four Coronelli globes charting an empire long since vanished.