Beauty, Power and Tragedy: The Achilleion
Empress of Austria Elisabeth of Bavaria, also known as
Sissi, was a woman obsessed with beauty and very powerful but tragically vulnerable since the loss of her only son, Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria in the Mayerling affair in 1889. A year later in 1890 she built a summer palace in the region of Gastouri to the south of the city, with the powerful mythical hero Achilles as its central theme.
Achilles was considered the most handsome of the heroes assembled at Troy, but he was tragically vulnerable at his heel.