Schloss Niederweiden is a Baroque country palace in Engelhartstetten, in Lower Austria’s Marchfeld region. Its modest scale distinguishes it from the nearby Schloss Hof, but its architecture was designed to make a compact building feel expressive. In 1685, Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg acquired the Engelhartstetten estate and village of Niederweiden. The medieval castle of Grafenweiden, a few hundred metres away, was already a ruin. Around 1693, Starhemberg commissioned Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach to design a new hunting lodge beside the abandoned settlement.
Fischer von Erlach used three geometric forms—an oval, a rectangle and a square—to create what the official palace history calls a light pleasure-garden building. The façade shifts forward and back rather than presenting one flat wall; an elevated oval central hall gives the small palace a distinct profile. Sculptures crown the attic line. Two service buildings stood to the west: a game kitchen and a confectionery. These working spaces are a reminder that courtly leisure depended on cooks, staff and food preparation as much as on decorated rooms and landscaped views.
