Schönbrunn Palace, situated in Vienna, is one of the most important cultural monuments in Austria. The palace together with its ancillary buildings and extensive park and gardens illustrating the tastes, interests, and aspirations of successive Habsburg monarchs has also been one of the major tourist attractions in Vienna since the 1860s.

The complex, on the other hand, includes by far more attractions: Besides the Tiergarten, world's oldest existing zoo, an orangerie erected around 1755, staple luxuries of European palaces of its type, a Palm house is noteworthy. Western parts were turned into English garden style in 1828–1852. At the outmost western edge, a botanical garden going back to an earlier arboretum was re-arranged in 1828, when the Old Palm House was built.

The sculpted garden space between the palace and the Neptune Well is called the Great Parterre including 32 sculptures which are allegories of deities and virtues. The French garden is a big part of the area containing a maze. Scheduled as a listed monument, the whole ensemble, including the palace, the park, extending for 1.2 km from east to west and approximately one kilometre from north to south, with its numerous architectural features, fountains and statues and not least the zoo which is the oldest of its kind in the world was placed on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List in 1996.