by InTrieste
More than a century after it left the city, part of the Egyptian antiquities once assembled by Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria has returned to Trieste for a new exhibition exploring the Habsburg archduke’s fascination with ancient Egypt and the culture of collecting in the 19th century.
The exhibition, titled Una Sfinge l’attrae. Massimiliano d’Asburgo e le collezioni egizie tra Trieste e Vienna (“A Sphinx Attracts Him: Maximilian of Habsburg and the Egyptian Collections Between Trieste and Vienna”), is set to open April 2 at the Miramare Castle and will run through Nov. 1, 2026.
More than 100 artifacts are on display at the castle’s former stables, many on loan from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where Maximilian’s Egyptian collection has been housed since the late 19th century. Additional pieces come from the Civico Museo d’Antichità J. J. Winckelmann, reflecting the broader enthusiasm for Egyptology among Trieste’s collectors during that period.
It has been 143 years since the collection was transferred to Vienna, where it entered the Egyptian and Near Eastern collection of the museum in 1891. The new exhibition marks a rare return of part of the collection to the city where Maximilian had envisioned displaying it.
The show is organized by the Miramare Castle Historical Museum and Park and co-organized with the Kunsthistorisches Museum. It was curated by Massimo Osanna, director general of Italian state museums; Christian Greco, director of the Museo Egizio; and the art historians Cäcilia Bischoff and Michaela Hüttner.
The exhibition traces the origins of Maximilian’s Egyptian holdings and places them within the wider context of 19th-century collecting practices. In that period, collections of antiquities were often assembled by aristocrats and scholars as private displays of taste and prestige. Over time, such collections increasingly became objects of academic study and public museum display.
Maximilian, younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I and later briefly Maximilian I of Mexico, began building his Egyptian collection in the early 1850s. One of the first acquisitions came from Anton von Laurin, a former Austrian consul general in Alexandria, from whom Maximilian purchased a substantial group of artifacts.
The collection expanded through diplomatic contacts and targeted acquisitions. Maximilian intended it not only as a display of personal prestige but also as a resource for scholarly study of ancient Egyptian civilization. To that end, he commissioned the Egyptologist Stephan Ladislaus Endlicher Reinisch to examine the artifacts and prepare a detailed catalog.
After becoming emperor of Mexico in the 1860s, Maximilian instructed Reinisch to conduct further purchases in Egypt between 1865 and 1866, with the goal of enlarging the collection and eventually donating it to the National Museum in Mexico City. Those plans were never realized. Maximilian’s reign collapsed amid civil war, and he was executed by republican forces in 1867 at the age of 34.
Following the integration of Miramare into the network of imperial Habsburg residences administered from Vienna, many objects from the archduke’s collections were transferred to Austrian institutions. The Egyptian artifacts ultimately became part of the holdings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
The exhibition in Trieste reconstructs that history through artifacts, documents and contextual materials, while also highlighting the archduke’s broader vision of creating an “ideal museum” at Miramare to display the wide-ranging collections he assembled during his life.
Alongside the exhibition, the Miramare museum and park have organized a series of educational activities for schools in collaboration with CoopCulture, including workshops and guided programs introducing students to ancient Egyptian culture and symbolism.
The initiative was developed with the collaboration of the City of Trieste and PromoTurismoFVG, with scientific support from the Museo Egizio in Turin.
