The Comedy of Errors: Schloss Hof, 31 July

At thus time of year the area around the old Roman settlement of Carnuntum has  its annual arts festival. Carnuntum is located about 50 minutes drive to the south east of Vienna on the banks of the Danube River almost  opposite Bratislava.  It was  major fort, port and town in Roman times at a significant trading crossroards (http://www.carnuntum.co.at/) As a part of wide a range of activities  the highlight is an open air performance of a Shakepeare play  by the travelling company from the  Globe Theatre, London. Last year it was  "A midsummer night's dream" and this year "The comedy of errors". I went with some old friends from Darwin days who have also been working in Vienna for the same length of time as me, Paul and his wife Susannah. We were joined by some other friends of theirs , Ingrid and Leo.

The day started  around lunchtime with the drive through the village of Carnuntum-Petronell  to look around then to  the adjacent village of Bad  Deutsch-Altenburg to see an old gothic church and then take a guided tour around the roman museum (Museum  Carnunthinum)  before going to Schloss Hof   to have an early dinner and look at the baroque gardens before the show in the courtyard at 2000 hrs.

The church was interesting - theer has been a church on the site for 900 years plus . The chuchyard was very well kept and full of mostly family graves, many werre still active as we saw from the memorial for one old lady recently buried at about 100 years old!  The church has an old round building  which was thought to be  the original church as well as the main building which is very distinctive.

Churchyard with well kept flowers everywhere-note the tap and communal  cans for watering

The original round church

The main church with the odd look of the roof at two levels. I suspect the right hand side  was the older part and then the gothic part to the left was added later. Apparently the Hungarians sacked the site at least twice  in earlier times so I guess the site has been rebuilt and  modified many times.

The museum was built in 1901 at the behest of Fraz Joef I who wanted it in the style of an up-market Roman Villa

Museum exterior

The museum is well set out inside- not too crowded and a very interesting display  about Roman building methods and materials and surveying.

Schloss Hof  (http://www.gardenvisit.com/garden/schlosshof_vienna)  was another royal summer palace refuge from Vienna and is being restored. The interior had been badly damaged after the Russian occupation at the end of WW2,  but slowly refurbishment is under way.

This room  shows how they have redone the plaster and mouldings but as they are short of funds you have to imagine that all the grey detail work is really gold leaf covered - like the examples around the door!

The gardens have been a major restoration project and are beautiful but still a fair way to go-the water features are about half done but the lawns and flower beds look great and the Sika deer in the small paddocks at the far end looked pretty content.

View from the upper terrace-Bratislava in the back left distance

Middle terrace gardens

One of the restored water features

Sika fawn

The stage set up in the courtyard

The play was hilarious and very well produced in the usual "Globe" style.  A real Shakepeare, lots of action and lots of laughs farce  -and the problem of having to use two sets of identical twins was overcome wonderfully well. The mosquitoes were not too bad and the weather was just right. It only remained for Paul to drive us home (already planning how we can arrange to be here again for next year) reaching Vienna about 2330.