🇦🇹 The Kunsthistorisches Museum | Museum of Art History

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The Kunsthistorisches Museum | Museum of Art History

The Kunsthistorisches Museum

The Habsburgs were passionate art collectors for 600 years, and the incomparable treasure trove this passion produced can be admired at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

The museum is located at right-angles with the Burgring, bordering Maria-Theresien-Platz alongside its sister institution, the Naturhistorisches Museum. Just to provide some orientation: if you’re crossing the Ring from the Hofburg, and coming via Heldenplatz, that’s the Kunsthistorisches Museum on your left-hand side. You can’t miss the bronze statue of Maria Theresia – centrally located between the two magnificent buildings, mistress of all she surveys. The architect responsible for the monument was Carl von Hasenauer, with completion of the bronze sculptures entrusted to the sculptor Caspar Zumbusch. Including the base, the monument covers an area of 632 square metres, and is 19.36 metres high. The figure of the Kaiserin alone is 6 metres in height. All of which makes it the largest monument to the Habsburgs anywhere in Vienna.

It was Kaiser Franz Josef I who had originally given the order, in 1858, for the museum to be constructed as a “palace of the beaux arts”. It was designed to bring together, under one enormous roof, all the treasures that had been accumulated in the royal collections up to that point, many of which had been stored in far-flung locations across the Empire, in suitably impressive style. The order to tear down the ancient city walls, enabling the expansion of the city that had become so urgently necessary, had already been issued by the Kaiser. And so, as part of the expansion of the Ringstraße, the monarchy’s magnificent new boulevard opposite the Hofburg, the two royal museums were planned on land just across the Ringstraße, on the open land that had once formed the glacis.

Following a long and drawn-out planning phase and competitive tender, construction of the new building only actually began in November of 1871. The architects eventually given the job, Gottfried Semper and Carl von Hasenauer, built the museum in Italian Renaissance style.

Outside, the octagonal cupola tower, crowned with a bronze figure of the Pallas Athena, dominates at the centre. The Attica is filled with statues depicting celebrities from the visual arts; allegorical statues of painting and sculpture sit left and right of the main entrance.

Inside, the first thing to strike you is the imposing staircase. This is decorated with works by such greats as Gustav Klimt, Franz Matsch and Hans Makart. The staircase is also the entrance to the impressive Cupola Hall, which might justifiably be described as the “high point”, in every sense of the term, of the building’s magnificent interior.

The museum is divided up into various collections. The Kunstkammer Wien is widely considered the “Cradle of the Museum”. The world’s most important collection of its kind, it provides a doorway into a “world of the beautiful and the spiritual, curiosities and the miraculous”.

The Habsburgs collected exotica and rare objects from the late Middle Ages until the Baroque era. Many of these pieces were also said to have magic powers, such as the shark’s teeth believed to be dragons’ tongues. One of the 2,200 or so breathtakingly beautiful objects kept here is the Saliera, a refined masterpiece of gold enamelling by Benvenuto Cellini. Cellini created the piece of tableware – a salt cellar – by hand, out of gold leaf, for Francis I of France between 1540 and 1543. By doing so, he created a truly unique work of art. When Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol was later given the piece as a gift, the Saliera came into the possession of the Habsburgs.

The salt cellar attracted worldwide attention for different reasons more recently, when it was targeted in a spectacular art robbery in 2003. At the time, the FBI placed the work at number 5 on their wanted list of most valuable stolen works of art. In Vienna, a special investigation group was even created and dedicated to the case. Despite such efforts, the Saliera disappeared for three years: it wasn’t until early 2006 that the priceless piece was recovered, and returned to its rightful home at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

The museum’s Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection is one of the most remarkable in the world. An incredible 17,000 objects have been assembled here, covering a timeframe of almost 4,500 years – from the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egyptian periods, around 4,000 to 3,500 B.C., through to the early Christian era. The exhibition uncovers mysterious rites such as the death cult, and offers an overview of Egyptian cultural history, visual arts, and the development of writing.

The Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities is also home to exhibits ranging over more than three millennia, from Bronze Age ceramics from Cyprus through to discoveries from the Early Middle Ages.

With its 700,000 items, the Coin Collection is one of the five largest and most important such institutions in the world. It is home not just to displays of coins, but also to pre-monetary forms of exchange, paper money, orders or shares, and embossing tools.

The Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum is also a place of superlatives. There’s hardly another quite like it, anywhere in the world. The Gallery is inspiring, moving from the Venetian painting of the 16th century, in the shape of works by Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto and others, through to Flemish painting of the 17th century, represented by Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, and Old German painting, and masters such as Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach. As well as paintings by Rembrandt, Raphael, Velázques and Caravaggio, the unique collection of works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder is another amazing high point.

Just another of the countless reasons why the Kunsthistorisches Museum is one of the most-visited tourist attractions in Vienna today.

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