Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna

The Kunsthistorisches Museum was built between 1871 and 1891 after plans by Gottfried Semper and Carl von Hasenauer. Renowned as one of the most important and impressive museum buildings of the nineteenth century, it was planned during the extension of the Hofburg together with its “twin”, the Museum of Natural History opposite, and the Neue Burg on Heldenplatz. The desire for imperial prestige and faith in the dynastic tradition released gigantic financial and artistic forces. Accumulated over the centuries and in part widely dispersed,  at last, in 1891, the Habsburg Collections were now to be opened for the first time together in a fitting environment, an eagerly anticipated event. The holdings of Egyptian antiquities, classical Greek and Roman sculpture and applied arts, and paintings of the fifteenth to the eighteenth century are unparalleled – together with the resplendent, monumental building they open up a unique and synaesthetic world that is a stimulant for all the senses. The staircase and domed hall are designed in a concentrated blend of Neo-Baroque decorative elements to form one of the most exquisite and festive interiors known in European museum architecture. Ceiling and wall paintings in the staircase are by Mihály von Munkácsy, Hans Makart, Gustav Klimt and more, meanwhile the domed hall is an architectural highlight and potent statement of imperial self-manifestation. Relief decorations with the portraits of Emperor Maximilian I, Charles V, Rudolf II, Charles VI. and Franz Joseph I and the Archdukes Ferdinand (II), Albrecht (VII) and Leopold Wilhelm commemorate the most outstanding patrons from the House of Habsburg.

Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection

The entry to the galleries of the Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection is a variation  on the theme of the imposing vestibule architecture: mighty bundled papyrus columns, Egyptian-inspired wall decorations, display cases and ornaments provide the spectacular backdrop for a collection whose inventory of Old Kingdom monuments is one of the largest and most outstanding in quality in its field. Grave goods and sarcophaguses, precious papyri, inscriptions and reliefs testify in multifarious ways to religion and everyday life in Ancient Egypt. Sculptures and inscriptions from ancient southern Arabia form the core of the Near Eastern Collection.

Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities

The collection of works from the third millennium BC until circa 1000 AD is one of the most important of its kind and experienced a spectacular re-opening in 2005, when its sculptures, bronzes, statuettes, vases, glass and goldsmith works dazzled in new glory. The collection of ornamental cameos – including the Gemma Augustea acquired under Emperor Rudolf II – and the treasure troves from the epoch of the great migrations and from the Middle Ages are among the most impressive in the world.

Picture Gallery

The collection of paintings from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century covers the entire main floor of the KHM: Italian, Spanish and French painting on one side – German, Early  Netherlandish, Flemish and Dutch painting on the other. Spectacular works at the summit of the art make a tour through the galleries a sensuous and intellectual delight: an unparalleled concentration of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, key examples of the art of Albrecht Dürer, the incomparable variety of works of Flemish Baroque painting – here most especially Rubens and Anton van Dyck, and, the grand conclusion, Vermeer and Rembrandt. The second half of the galleries is dominated by Italian painting: Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto – the great brains behind the Venetian Cinquecento, individualists like Parmigianino and Lorenzo Lotto; Caravaggio, one of the forerunners of Baroque aesthetics, and, finally, the meticulously painted urban views of Bernardo Bellotto.

Coin Cabinet

The collection contains more than 700,000 objects and presents a richly diverse view of an artistic genre that had to seek satisfying solutions in the smallest space.

 

Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
Maria Theresien-Platz
1010 Vienna
+43-1-525 24 - 4025

 

Opening hours: 

Tuesday - Sunday 10 am - 6 pm Thursday 10 am - 9 pm (Coin Cabinet until 6 pm)

 

Standorte

 

Imperial Treasury in the Hofburg

The Imperial Treasury opens up a unique panorama of more than a thousand years of European history. It contains the most important insignia and crowns from the Middle Ages: the insignia and jewels of the Holy Roman Empire with the Imperial Crown and the Holy Lance. Further highlights include the crown of Emperor Rudolf II (the later Austrian Imperial Crown) and the liturgical vestments and other precious items associated with the Order of the Golden Fleece. The Ecclesiastical Treasury offers a fascinating journey through the history of art, piety and religion; the objects form a narrative about the medieval cult of relics, Habsburg Catholicism during the Counter-Reformation, the piety of post-Baroque rulers and Austrian religious folk practices.

 

Imperial Treasury in the Hofburg
Hofburg
1010 Vienna
+43-1-525 24-0

 

Museum of Carriages and Department of Court Uniforms in Schönbrunn

The Museum of Carriages – the Wagenburg – in Schönbrunn holds the core inventory of the former fleet of vehicles for the Viennese Court. After the end of the monarchy in 1918, there remained about 100 carriages, sledges, sedan chairs and litters along with their matching harnesses and caparisons. Among the highlights are the gilded “Imperial Carriage”, Maria Theresa’s Carousel Carriage, the Child’s Phaeton of Napoleon’s son, the Black Hearse of the Viennese Court, the personal  Laudaulet of Empress Elisabeth (“Sisi”) and the only preserved Court automobile of 1914. A selection of coaches of the Princes von Thurn und Taxis was recently adopted as a permanent loan into the collection.

 

Museum of Carriages and Department of Court Uniforms in Schönbrunn
Schönbrunn
1130 Vienna

 

The Museum of Ethnology

The Museum of Ethnology is one of the foremost museums of its kind. Founded upon the Anthropological-Ethnographical Department of the Natural History Museum, the museum was initiated in 1928 and has been housed ever since in the Corps de logis of the “Neue Burg”. The museum’s holdings were collected since the early sixteenth century and arrived later in the Imperial-Royal Collections by way of Ambras Castle in Tyrol. It holds more than 200,000 ethnographic objects, 25,000 historical photographs, 136,000 printed works and more than 300 kilometres of film footage on the history, culture and everyday life of mainly non-European peoples. Parallel to the general refurbishment since 2004, special exhibitions have been held again since May 2007 and since 2008 the South and Southeast Asia and the Himalaya countries have been presented in a new light.

 

The Museum of Ethnology
Neue Burg
1010 Vienna

 

Austrian Theatre Museum

The Austrian Theatre Museum presents exhibitions on the great themes of theatre history – drama, dance, puppetry, film, pantomime, the opera and much more. It has compiled more than 100,000 hand drawings, almost 1,000 stage sets and architectural models, more than 700,000 photographs, around 2,000 memorabilia of famous actors, authors and composers, autographs by Beethoven, Goethe and Mahler and more, Klimt’s painting “Nuda Veritas”, and constumes designed by Kokoschka and Wotruba and so forth. The permanent collection is closed at present; despite this, special exhibitions still take place.

 

Austrian Theatre Museum
Lobkowitzplatz 2
1010 Vienna

 

Neue Burg

Collection of Arms and Armour

You wander past ceremonial armour, the most expensive fashions in clothing, find out about types of cutting and stabbing weapons and firearms, and the complex techniques involved in tournament equipment. The superlative handicraft and artistic quality of the pieces derives from the standards of prestige upheld by the former owner: practically all West European sovereigns of the fifteenth to the early twentieth century are represented with items. By examining made-to-measure armours we can reconstruct the stature and size of quite a few protagonists of European history. No other collection of arms and armour in the western world can compare with this concentration of high-quality pieces, their history  documented iwithout a break.

Collection of Ancient Music Instruments

The condition, quantity and diversity of the instruments are peerless throughout the world: lutes, violins – for instance a quite exceptional rarity, a violin once owned by Leopold Mozart – hunting horns, trombones, guitars, kettle drums and grand fortepianos. Each of the twelve galleries is devoted to a musical epoch (Late Renaissance and Baroque are particularly rich in exhibits) or a musical personality.

Ephesus Museum

The excavations on the terrain of the ancient city of Ephesus have been directed by Austrian specialists ever since 1895. Ephesus possessed one of the Seven Wonders of the World in the Temple of Artemis and advanced during the Roman era to become the capital city of the Province of Asia. Historic finds were transported into the Imperial Collection of Antiquities until 1906: columns, capitals, mosaics, the sculpture of a Greek athlete and the relief of a warlike Amazon, bronze candlesticks and relics of souvenir hunting by lovers of antiquity. The detailed model of the city graphically rounds off the impression of the character and grandeur of the ancient city. Pride of the Ephesus Museum is the so-called “Parthian Monument”. The monumental relief series may have been part of a Hellenistic temple.

 

Neue Burg
Entrance Heldenplatz
1010 Vienna
+43-1-525 24- 0