Palais Porcia is a former urban residence in the western quarter of the

Innere Stadt The Innere Stadt (; Central Bavarian: ''Innare Stod'') is the 1st municipal Districts of Vienna, district of Vienna () located in the center of the Austrian capital. The Innere Stadt is the old town of Vienna. Until the city boundaries were expa ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. It stands at 23, Herrengasse between Palais Kinsky and Palais Trautmansdorff and across

Palais Harrach Palais Harrach is a Baroque palace in Vienna, Austria. It was owned by the noble Harrach family. The building was extensively renovated and restored in the late 1990s, and it houses offices and shops today. Count Ferdinand Bonaventura I von Harra ...

. The palace was built in 1546 for the descendants of Count Gabriel von Salamanca-Ortenburg.Wehdorn et al., p. 56. It was representative of the simple

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

style that emerged in Vienna in the middle of the 16th century. In the 17th and later centuries it was extensively remodelled in

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

and

Rococo Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...

styles but the inner court still contains an early Renaissance arcade. As of 2010, Palais Porcia houses the Administrative Library of the Austrian Federal Chancellery.
Administrative Bibliothek des Bundes (AB) (in German)
.'' Austrian State Chancellery. Retrieved 17-06-2010.

History

The first ''documented'' stone buildings on the site of present-day Palais Porcia emerged in the 15th century.
Palais Porcia(in German)
.'' Austrian State Chancellery. Retrieved 17-06-2010. The foundations are older, dating back to

Roman period The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...

.
Weitere Amtsgebäude des Bundeskanzleramtes (in German)
.'' Austrian State Chancellery. Retrieved 17-06-2010. In 1528 the cluster of buildings south of Freyung was purchased by the royal treasurer (German: ''königliche Pfennigmeister'') Johann Löbl. In 1538 Löbl sold it to his successor, treasurer Count Gabriel von Salamanca-Ortenburg. The new owner commissioned the rebuilding of old medieval structures, using arcades to blend them into a single stately residence with then-fashionable Renaissance facade. The work was completed after the Count's death, in 1546. In 1592 the building passed to Hofkirchen and Losenstein families. In 1602 they began an extensive remodeling that added early

detail to the original facade. Inside, the building acquired an ornate

spiral staircase Stairs are a structure designed to bridge a large vertical distance between lower and higher levels by dividing it into smaller vertical distances. This is achieved as a diagonal series of horizontal platforms called steps which enable passage ...

carved of "Royal limestone" (German: ''Kaiserstein'') from Kaisersteinbruch.Kaisersteibruch (Hungarian: ''Császárkőbánya'') is part of present-day Großgemeinde

Bruckneudorf Bruckneudorf ( hu, Királyhida) is a small town in the district of Neusiedl am See in the federal state of Burgenland in Austria, neighbouring Bruck an der Leitha ("Leitha Bridge"). Its name means ''bridge new village'', whereas the Hungarian vers ...

(Hungarian: ''Királyhida''). In 1627 the Palais passed to Count Wratislav zu Fürstenberg, in 1643 to

Jörger von Tollet The House of Jörger von Tollet (also: Jörger, Jörger zu Tollet) is an old and influential noble family from Upper Austria Upper Austria (german: Oberösterreich ; bar, Obaöstareich) is one of the nine states or of Austria. Its capita ...

family, in 1660 to Count Johann Karl von Porcia. The building survived the fire of 1683 that destroyed the buildings of the nearby Freyung and is still named after the Porcias although the family disposed with the building in the 1720s. It became the property of statesman Bartholomäus von Tinti, who also owned the Schallaburg castle. In the 1750s it was purchased by the Court of Maria Theresa of Austria and remains a state property to date (2010). In 1883 the interiors were completely rebuilt, and the Palais became a

courthouse A courthouse or court house is a building that is home to a local court of law and often the regional county government as well, although this is not the case in some larger cities. The term is common in North America. In most other English-spe ...

Library

The Administrative Library of the Ministry of Interior, predecessor of the present-day library, was founded in 1849. It was based in the Ministry offices on Wipplingerstrasse. In 1897 the library moved into its own building on Marc-Aurel-Strasse, one year later it relocated to Hohen Markt.
Gestern und heute – Die Behördenbibliothek des Bundes (in German)
.'' Austrian State Chancellery. Retrieved 17-06-2010. In 1925 the library relocated into recently remodelled Palais Porcia. Since the establishment of the

First Austrian Republic The First Austrian Republic (german: Erste Österreichische Republik), officially the Republic of Austria, was created after the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 10 September 1919—the settlement after the end of World War I w ...

the library remains a branch of the Federal Chancellery. The library stocks a reference collection of Austrian laws and regulations and houses the

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

center of the Chancellery. Since 2000, the library gradually took over and digitized the collections of the Federal Government ministries. In 2006 it became Austria's principal uplink gateway to

SourceOECD SourceOECD was the online library of the OECD from 2001-2010. In July 2010 it was replaced by OECD iLibrary. OECD publications The OECD publishes roughly 250 books a year, on subjects as diverse as general economy, statistics, agriculture, science, ...

(''Austrian OECD depositary''). As of 2010, the library loans books only to government employees. The reading hall is open free of charge to all visitors (photo ID required to enter).

Notes

References

* Czeike, Felix and Czeike, Helga (1999, in German).
Wien: Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte der Donaumetropole
'. DuMont Reiseverlag. . * Wehdorn et al. (2004).
Vienna, a guide to the UNESCO world heritage sites
'. Birkhäuser. . {{Authority control Porcia Libraries in Vienna Government buildings in Austria Renaissance architecture in Austria Houses completed in 1546 Buildings and structures in Innere Stadt 1546 establishments in the Habsburg monarchy 16th-century establishments in Austria Establishments in the Archduchy of Austria