Well, there’s a mixed bag of reviews here, I don’t think it’s worth discussing if the Empress Elisabeth was good, bad or just a woman born a little out of her time who married into unbelievable wealth and never quite found her inner soul. I suppose I did discuss it there a bit.
The review must be about the museum itself. Well, it’s popular, summer months it’s rammed full of tourists and Sisi fans and unlike most of the museums in Vienna it’s got a timed entry, and they are quite strict on it.
The audio guide is good, the numbering is peculiar and a bit like a treasure hunt and doesn’t always correspond to what you are looking at ( especially with the jewels and the dresses).
The two MAJOR problems with this museum are 1) the layout of the exhibition, it just can’t cope with the numbers, so corridors get crammed full of people, some trying to take in everything and some racing round on the next step of the Sisi tour.
2) The lighting. I have no idea where to start with this. If you are going to have interesting objects and documents in cases, they need explanation. To be able to read the text next to them would be require them to be lit in a dark room. Now, I get that we are thrust into the dark world of her psyche, I get that we experience the drama and the theatricality of her life. However, subtle lighting on cards in an exhibition is not a tricky thing to achieve. It’s a really odd error and for anyone with sight issues they will be entirely reliant on the audio guide (which is very good - if a little sketchy on her ‘absences’ away form court in England for example. If you know, you know).
I enjoyed the imperial apartment and it gave me a whole new insight into Franz Josef. A man who seemed to be genuinely kind and a little stuffy and perhaps a little out of his depth. However, he did do his best I feel and that comes across in his quarters and his very structured existence there.
The whole exhibition left me I. Toro minds, am I glad I saw it - well yess it’s a fascinating story for history. However, as I walked through Elisabeth’s apartments seeing her bath, her toilet, her bed, I was struck by how this woman who in her lifetime went to the greatest lengths to shield her private life, to retreat from the public gaze is now the poster girl for Vienna. By the time you get through the gift shop and past the Sisi umbrellas, notepads, soaps, and yes socks (!) you may, like me, feel even more sorry for this lonely, spirited and self absorbed soul who in another day and age may have found more to say, do and become. The tragedy of the assassination takes the main focus of the exhibition but perhaps the greatest tragedy is how much she would have hated this, even after over a century has passed I couldn’t help but feel it was slightly intrusive.
And badly lit.