After the German television miniseries produced in 2022 – “The Empress” about the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria aired on Netflix, the wedding dress of the main character became famous.
A portrait of Queen Sisi wearing a wedding dress and the wedding dress have been recreated.
However, few know that this dress disappeared right after Elisabeth’s wedding and has been hunted by royal historians for many decades. The wedding dress is considered a valuable treasure by researchers and antique collectors.
In 1854, after Empress Elisabeth of Austria, also known as Queen Sisi, married Emperor Franz Joseph in Vienna, Austria, her dress went missing. Since then, the wedding dress of Queen Sisi has remained a secret for nearly 200 years.
An image believed to be Queen Sisi’s wedding ceremony.
Now, thanks to a series of clues, Austrian researcher Dr. Monica Kurzel-Runtscheiner has been able to partially solve the puzzle of this antique costume.
In 2021, Dr. Kurzel-Runtscheiner, known as “the lost treasure hunter,” received a message from a stranger. It was a woman and a freelance researcher from Spain – Silvia Santibañez.
In that message, Silvia Santibañez said that she had found a little-known portrait of Elisabeth painted in 1857 at the Silesian Museum in Opava, Czech Republic. In this painting, Sisi was wearing her wedding dress, and the train of the dress appears to be similar to the train preserved at the Imperial Carriage Museum.
“I am delighted,” Dr. Kurzel-Runtscheiner said. “Finally, I had evidence that Sisi indeed wore the dress that we currently own at her wedding. Moreover, it shows how the whole dress looked like, something that we could only speculate about before.”
Afterwards, Kurzel and designers created an illustration of Queen Sisi’s wedding dress. The dress has been recreated and displayed alongside the 1857 portrait of Sisi at the Imperial Carriage Museum until November 5, 2023.
Lets admire the mysterious and mesmerizing wedding dress below:
The newly discovered portrait shows Empress Sisi wearing a previously unseen dress.
A handmade replica of Empress Sisi’s wedding dress is displayed next to her portrait.
This is the first time the public can see two parallel versions of the dress that Kurzel believes to be the lost wedding dress of Empress Elisabeth of Austria for nearly 200 years.
The mysterious wedding gown hunted for 200 years: Whose is it and how valuable is it?
The enigmatic lost wedding gown of the most rebellious Queen in Europe, missing for 179 years, has been hunted relentlessly for two centuries, and to this day, the wedding dress remains a mystery.
