Guards Room

The highest-ranking guards were the Kaiserlich-Königliche Erste Arcièrenleibgarde and the Königlich Ungarische Leibgarde, which were formed exclusively of officers. These two lifeguards units, together with the Kaiserlich-Königliche Trabantenleibgarde in the monarch’s immediate ambit, were responsible for security and order at court.
The task of guarding and security outside the palaces fell to the Kaiserlich und Königlicher Leibgarde-Reitereskadron, a cavalry squadron, and the unmounted guards of the Leibgarde-Infanterie-Kompagnie, which were known for short as the ‘Burggendarmen’ (‘palace gendarmes’).

The voluminous ceramic stove in the alcove represents an interesting detail from the history of the palace’s service equipment. Like most of the stoves in the palace, it was fired from a chamber in the wall behind it. The walls of the palace are extremely thick and contain cramped and lightless service rooms that were accessed from behind through low metal doors. Originally fuelled with timber from the imperial game reserves, many of the stoves were converted to run on a hot-air heating system in the nineteenth century. This system was decommissioned in 1992.