Wien Museum

Just as special as the Prater Funfair itself is the museum: an impressive display of the historic changes that have taken place in Vienna’s bizarre and beautiful entertainment culture.

Here we experience a combination of delight and melancholy, like the clairvoyant automat “Internationales HeirathsVermittlungs Bureau” (International Marriage Bureau)”, Maxi – the legendary ventriloquist’s doll which was an inspiration for the Viennese cabaret performer Helmut Qualtinger – and a dragon from the grotto ride pulled down long ago.

The large original model of the 1873 Vienna World Fair recalls on the one hand the desire for optimal self-presentation and on the other an embarrassing flop – the visitors stayed away, cholera raged throughout the city.

The Zwergerl (dwarf’s) shoes, the giant’s suit and the “Dame ohne Unterleib” – the abdomen-less lady” are relics of late nineteenth-century freak shows that are so distasteful to us now.

And Vienna’s legendary “strong men” are also part of the show.

Opening times

Friday to Sunday and public holidays, 10 am – 1 pm and 2 pm – 6 pm

Closed: 1.1., 1.5., 25.12. also Easter Monday, Whit Monday and other holidays occurring on a Monday.

Breathing fresh life into a jewel of art nouveau: since the summer of 2005 a permanent exhibition documenting the life and work of the great Austrian architect has been presented in the Otto Wagner Pavilion on Karlsplatz.

The Art Nouveau pavilion was erected in 1898 in the course of Stadtbahn construction. Otto Wagner planned two portal buildings of identical design. Today, the Wien Museum uses the west pavilion, where the trains once left for Hütteldorf.

Wagner's design was revolutionary. The many decorative details make the station into a prime example of Viennese art nouveau. Metal and wood were painted apple-green, the signal colour of the Stadtbahn. Gold, and finest white marble were added on the exterior.

The planning for the underground rail junction of Karlsplatz in the late sixties threatened the pavilion with demolition. Protests followed; the station building was dismantled and re-erected in 1977, but elevated 1.5 m above its old level on the square. Now at last the west pavilion is paying Otto Wagner the homage due to him - with the new Otto Wagner Documentation exhibition.

Opening hours
April to October: Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays, 10 am – 6 pm
Closed: 1 May and Easter Monday, Whit Monday and other holidays occurring on a Monday.

Once the site of officers’ houses in the Roman fortress of Vindobona 2000 years ago, it is now the location of the new Römermuseum on Hoher Markt, where you can find out about the history of the Roman city of Vienna.

What die Roman Vienna look like?

How did people live in those days?

The presentation focuses on Vindobona’s heyday, with a population of more than 30,000 in the region of Vienna: a colourful melting pot of various peoples, locals as well as immigrants from all parts of the Roman Empire.

The legionary fortress served to secure the northern border of the empire. Around 6000 soldiers performed administrative and manual work and handicrafts as well as their military duties. In Vindobona they weren’t deprived of their accustomed lifestyle for there were plenty of leisure activities to be enjoyed – taverns, baths, theatres, not forgetting brothels.

The legionary fortress was a significant economic factor: round about Vindobona were urban settlements, important in providing commodities and food, including grain, bacon and cheese. Roman cultural technical achievements and value systems were adopted by the local populace, which in its turn influenced the Romans as well. Thus a new mixed culture evolved, which also integrated religious cults.

Construction works since the late nineteenth century have continually brought traces of Vienna’s Roman past to light.

The most important excavation – the remains of tribunes’ houses – has now been extended to become the Römermuseum, an outside branch of the Wien Museum

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays, 9 am – 6 pm

Closed: 1.1., 1.5. and 25.12.

The oldest secular frescoes in Vienna, the Neidhart Fresken, are preserved in the house on Tuchlauben 19. The building is fourteenth-century and was adorned around 1398 by the wealthy Viennese merchant Michel Menschein with a large-scale picture series. The frescoes show scenes from everyday life and the poetry of the Viennese minnesinger Neidhart von Reuental (c. 1180 - 1240), also a spring festival and roundel dance with banquet.

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays 10 am – 1 pm and 2 pm – 6 pm

Closed: 1.1., 1.5., 25.12. also Easter Monday, Whit Monday and other holidays occurring on a Monday.

For eight years, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) lived periodically in the house of his patron Johann Baptist Freiherr (Baron) von Pasqualati on the Mölkerbastei. The first major work he composed here was the opera “Leonore”, which was later re-named “Fidelio” – against Beethoven’s will. The Pasqualati Haus has existed in its present form since 1791.

It is certain he worked on the 5^th and 6^th Symphonies here, a task he had begun during his summer sojourn in Baden and Heiligenstadt. Later he wrote the small but well-known piano piece “Für Elise” here, and subsequent periods in the house produced the String Quartet op. 95, the Piano Trio op. 97, the 7^th and 8^th Symphonies, and the Violin Sonata op. 96. Bettina Brentano visited Beethoven several times while he was in the Pasqualati-Haus and recorded her impressions in her epistolatory novel “Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child”. The interest the two personalities had in each other was doubtlessly fostered through Brentano’s role as intermediary and additionally motivated by Beethoven’s work on the music for Egmont during this time.

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays, 10 am – 1 pm and 2 pm – 6 pm

Closed: 1.1., 1.5., 25.12. also Easter Monday, Whit Monday and other holidays occurring on a Monday.

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) spent the last twelve years of his life in Gumpendorf, then a suburb on the outskirts of Vienna. He bought his residence in an interim period between his journeys to England, added a storey, and in 1797 moved in at the age of 65.

He also died here on 31 May 1809. For the 200^th anniversary of his death in 2009 the permanent exhibition in the Haydnhaus was completely re-planned. It focuses on the last years of the composer and links them to the political and social situation of the time.  The garden of the house was remodelled after historical sources and is open to the public for the first time – a green oasis in the close vicinity of the bustling Mariahilfer Strasse.

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays, 10 am – 1 pm and 2 pm – 6 pm

Closed: 1.1., 1.5., 25.12. also Easter Monday, Whit Monday and other holidays occurring on a Monday.

Franz Schubert spent the first four and a half years of his life in the house on Nussdorfer Strasse. He lived only two and a half months in the house where he died. Between these two locations we can follow a life which, though short, was fulfilled through his prolific and innovative work. He was a musician who alongside – and after – Beethoven was one of the first composers to be able to live off his works.

“I came into the world for nothing else, only composing,” Franz Schubert is supposed to have once said to a friend. The documentation of his life in the two places dedicated to his memory has the objective of illustrating this statement.

Franz Schubert was born in the kitchen of the house on Nussdorfer Strasse 54 on 31 January 1797. He spent the first four and a half years of his life here. The exhibition illustrates and documents the major part of his biography: Schubert’s education and musical development, his family and friends. Exhibits include the most famous contemporary portraits of Schubert by Wilhelm August Rieder, Moritz von Schwind and Leopold Kupelwieser, and also an emotional highlight – Franz Schubert’s spectacles, so to speak his “trademark”. During the last months before his death in November 1828, Franz Schubert lived in his brother Ferdinand’s home on Kettenbrückengasse. The memorial apartment on Kettenbrückengasse additionally informs us about the end of Schubert’s life. On display are his last musical sketches, the last letter he wrote, and the evident love and care shown by his relatives in connection with his death, likewise in written form.

Visitors to both memorial sites are given the opportunity of coming even closer to Franz Schubert by hearing a comprehensive selection of his music.

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays, 10 am – 1 pm and 2 pm – 6 pm

Closed: 1.1., 1.5., 25.12. also Easter Monday, Whit Monday and other holidays occurring on a

The Fashion Collection of the Wien Museum is one of the most comprehensive of its kind in Europe, holding more than 20,000 items. The main part of the collection consists of ladies’ wear of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, dominated by evening and ball gowns and formal outfits. The collection is continually enlarged in order to demonstrate the continuous development of costume history through original examples.

It includes clothing for ladies, gentlemen, children and sportswear together with the fashionable accessories such as fans, handbags, gloves, hats, scarves, umbrellas, walking-sticks, stockings, handkerchiefs and costume jewellery.

And long-forgotten items also form part of the inventory, for instance button hooks, glove-stretchers, finger-tip formers, abdominal belts, corsets, chapeau claque (spring-folding top hat), ice-skate blades, smelling bottles, pages (dress clips), fireplace or handscreen fans, and “Strumpfzauber” –“miracle stockings” - leg-tanning tincture to copy stockings).

Fragile ladies’ lingerie from the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century and the twenties are also part of the show, cross-strap shoes from the Biedermeier era and creations by the Viennese fashion designers W.F. Adlmüller, Gertrude Höchsmann and Adele List. Embroidered, knitted and crocheted patterns, buttons and textile patterns complete the selection.

The Wien Museum Fashion Collection was founded after the Second World War by Professor Alfred Kunz, the first director of the Modeschule der Stadt Wien. In 1954 the holdings of the municiple collections and Professor Kunz’s private collection were combined to form the Fashion Collection of the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien (today Wien Museum).

A constantly augmented library also belongs to the Fashion Collection, with more than 12,000 volumes on fashion, art and cultural history. These are supplemented by photographs, fashion magazines from 1786 until the present day, and around 3,000 copper engravings of fashions from the second half of the nineteenth century.

Opening hours
The Fashion Collection is not open to the public!
Library: Monday to Friday, 8 am to 4 pm

Between 1989 and 1991, Michaelerplatz  was subjected to major archaeological excavation and research. Medieval and modern remains were uncovered, also the remains of the Roman canabae, the urban settlement around the fortress.

The canabae served as the residential settlement for the soldiers’ wives and children. Officially, the Roman legionary was not permitted to marry until the third century AD. He usually followed the custom and cohabited with his partner. He spent his leisure hours with his family in the canabae, where he could also find shops, taverns, and frequently brothels.

After the end of the first century AD two road routes led across the Kohlmarkt and Michaelerplatz. This was the junction of the amber route, which came from the region around Aquae (Baden bei Wien), with the Limes, the road following the Danube.

The remains of four different buildings were discovered at the road junction, probably timber-frame. The buildings were inhabited until into the fifth century and occasionally reconstructed as time went by. The building situated east of the junction is known to have had a vestibule, into which subsequently a shop stall  was built. It had underfloor and wall heating and was decorated with frescoes, as seen in the small vestiges of a fresco with vine-scroll ornamentation. A foundation stone was found west of the road junction indicating the existence here of a pillar-type commemorative tomb or monument.

Nothing is known about the end of the settlement around the legionary fortress. It was probably destroyed for the first time during the wars against the Marcomanni and Quadi (168 –180 AD).

The end of settlement cannot be dated exactly; the top Roman strata were probably removed to build the medieval Witmarkt  (later Kohlmarkt).

The complex was designed for exhibition in 1991 by the renowned Austrian architect Hans Hollein.

Always “open”!