On 30 November 1697, one year after commencing with the construction of the Stadtpalais, Prince Eugene purchased a sizable plot of land south of the Rennweg, the main road to Hungary.

Hildebrandt (1668–1745), whom the general had met whilst engaged in a military campaign in Piedmont, had already built Ráckeve Palace for him in 1702 on Csepel, an island in the Danube River south of Budapest.

At the time that the prince was planning to buy the land on the outskirts of Vienna for his Belvedere project, the area was completely undeveloped – an ideal place to construct a landscaped garden and summer palace.

Girard, who was employed as fontainier du roi, or the king's water engineer, in Versailles from 1707 to 1715, had started working as a garden inspector for the Bavarian elector Maximilian Emanuel from 1715 onwards.

This view as seen from the Upper Belvedere Palace with the Gardens in the foreground still plays a significant role in urban planning discussions when it comes to altering the skyline of the historic city center.

[3] The construction of the Upper Belvedere began as early as 1717, as testified by two letters that Prince Eugene sent from Belgrade to his servant Benedetti in summer 1718, describing the progress of work on the palace.

The Sala Terrena, however, was at risk of collapsing due to structural problems, and in the winter of 1732–33 Hildebrandt was forced to install a vaulted ceiling supported by four Atlas pillars, giving the room its current appearance.

Salomon Kleiner, an engineer from the Mainz elector's court, produced a ten-part publication between 1731 and 1740 containing a total of ninety plates, entitled Wunder würdiges Kriegs- und Siegs-Lager deß Unvergleichlichen Heldens Unserer Zeiten Eugenii Francisci Hertzogen zu Savoyen und Piemont ("Wondrous war and victory encampment of the supreme hero of our age Eugene Francis Duke of Savoy and Piedmont"), which documented in precise detail the state of the Belvedere complex.

Princess Victoria moved into the Belvedere, known at that point as the Gartenpalais, on 6 July 1736, but immediately made clear that she was not interested in her inheritance and aimed to auction off the palace complex as soon as possible.

On 15 April 1738, she married Prince Joseph of Saxe-Hildburghausen (1702–87), who was several years her junior, in the presence of the royal family in the Schlosshof in the Marchfeld region, Lower Austria.

Yet it was only when Princess Victoria finally decided to leave Vienna and return to her home city of Turin, Italy, eight years later that Maria Theresa, the daughter of Charles VI, was able to purchase the estate.

The palace was only once awakened from its slumbers in 1770 when a masked ball was staged there on 17 April to mark the occasion of the Imperial Princess Maria Antonia's marriage with the French Dauphin, who was later to become Louis XVI.

The Lord High Chamberlain Prince Johann Joseph Khevenhüller-Metsch and the court architect Nicolaus Pacassi were charged with taking care of the extensive preparations for the ball to which 16,000 guests were invited.

After the Habsburg Monarchy was forced to cede Tyrol to Bavaria in the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805, a new home had to be found for the imperial collection from Ambras Castle, near Innsbruck.

Watercolors by Carl Goebel the Younger pay testimony to the Lower Belvedere's beginnings as a museum, as does Joseph Bergmann's descriptive guide to the collection that dates from 1846.

The heir presumptive had the palace remodeled under the supervision of the architect Emil von Förster, who was also imperial undersecretary, and it served from that point onwards as Franz Ferdinand's residence.

The assassination of heir-apparent Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the outbreak of World War I, and the ensuing collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918 marked the start of a new era for the Belvedere.

Shortly after the end of the war in November 1918, the art historian Franz Haberditzl submitted a request to the Ministry of Education, asking for the palaces to be left to the Staatsgalerie.

[6] In 1996, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) released a report citing inadequate postwar restorations that had left the sala terrena and grand staircase without "much of their original character.

After winning an invitation-only competition, architect Susanne Zottl turned the Orangery into a modern exhibition hall whilst still preserving the building's original Baroque fabric.