Villa Toscana

The Villa Toscana in Gmunden, Upper Austria, on Lake Traunsee, is a palace villa built in the 19th century.

The building was constructed between 1870 and 1877 amidst 88,000 m² of parks as a princely residence for the exiled Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Maria Antonia of Naples-Sicily. The actual architect was the youngest of her ten children, Johann Salvator of Austria-Tuscany. Maria Antonia of Naples-Sicily had left Florence in 1859 after her husband Leopold II abdicated as Grand Duke of Tuscany.

In 1912 and 1913, Margaret Anna Maria Stonborough-Wittgenstein, daughter of entrepreneur Karl Wittgenstein, purchased the palace villa and the vast estate after his death. She had been married to the American chemist Dr. Jerome Stonborough since 1904. Both moved to America in 1917 as US citizens. After the First World War, they had the villa renovated by architect Rudolf Perco. In 1933, Dr. Jerome Stonborough committed suicide in Gmunden. She also died in 1958. In 1975, the heirs sold the palace villa and large parts of the estate to the Republic of Austria and moved into the so-called "Kleine Villa Toscana" on the same grounds, which Baron Christoph von Pittel had built in Biedermeier style in 1849 and which had been acquired by Grand Duke Leopold II after his death. In 1994, this property was also sold to the city of Gmunden.

In 1999, an Upper Austrian State Garden Show took place in the park of Villa Toscana.

Since January 1, 2000, the park, in the landscape style of the late 19th/early 20th century, has been protected by the amended Federal Monuments Act, as it is one of the most significant historical parks in Austria. Previously, a congress center was built on a section of the park, and a controversial hotel project was in planning.

In 2001, the Kleine Villa was restored. A Thomas Bernhard Archive is now located there.