Originally this room was the bedroom of the imperial couple. In 1870 Franz Joseph moved into a separate bedroom in the Imperial Chancellery Wing. Known after her second marriage to the Social Democrat politician Leopold Petznek as the ‘Red Archduchess’, her granddaughter stipulated in her Will that after her death that all the objects she had inherited from the imperial family were to be given to various museums and public collections.
Original objects owned by Elisabeth on display here include a small writing desk with matching chair and letter box, and in the left-hand corner of the room a neo-Gothic family altar executed by Vinzenz Pilz in Rome for the empress in 1855.