Emperor Franz Joseph

One of the most often (wrongly) quoted legends used to be that the hotel was opened by Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. His Apostolic Majesty, Emperor Franz Joseph I personally crowned the hotel in 1879 with an imperial visit. The occasion was the visit of an ‘old' patron. Prince Bismarck was in the city again - but this time ‘on business'. He discussed an alliance with Count Andrássy of Hungary in one of the parlours on the second floor, overheard only by his ‘imperial hound Tyras.' Eleven Prussian secret policemen kept watch over their prince, and one could not imagine Bismarck's antechamber without the commissar of the secret police. On 7 October 1879 the time had come: the treaty between Hungary and Prussia was sealed. That Franz Joseph I chose to go to the Hotel Imperial was a mark of great respect to his honoured guest.