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The Museum District & Neubau

For more detail of this area see Neigbourhood Map»

Neighbourhood Top Five

Throwing yourself head first into the artistic vortex of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, a whirl of Habsburg treasures from Egyptian tombs to rare breed Raphael, Dürer and Caravaggio masterworks.

Checking Vienna’s cultural pulse with an art-packed day at the vast MuseumsQuartier.

Making a date with the dinosaurs and prehistoric divas at the Naturhistorisches Museum.

Revelling in the neo-Gothic riches of the Rathaus on a free guided tour.

Going on a crafty walk through the cobbled backstreets of the Biedermeier Spittelberg neighbourhood.

Explore the Museum District & Neubau

The Museum District and Neubau walk a fine line between Habsburg history and modernity. The baroque imperial stables have been sent cantering into the 21st century with their transformation into the MuseumsQuartier, a colossal complex of on-the-pulse bars, cafes, boutiques and museums, including the Leopold, the proud holder of the world’s largest Schiele collection. Hang out in the courtyards here in summer and you can almost taste the creativity in the air.

Just around the corner on Maria-Theresien-Platz is the Kunsthistorisches Museum, an epic and exhilarating journey through art, where Rubens originals star alongside Giza treasures. Its architectural twin is the neoclassical Naturhistorisches Museum opposite.

When you’ve had your fill of art and culture, keep tabs on Vienna’s ever-evolving fashion and design scene with a mosey around Neubau’s backstreet studios and boutiques. After dark, the live-wire clubs and bars tucked under the Gürtel arches, slightly west, are where the young Viennese go to party.

Local Life

» Schanigärten Join the locals to toast summer at a flurry of pavement cafes and courtyard gardens, including Lux (Click here) and Amerlingbeisl (Click here) in Spittelberg, and Kantine (Click here) and Café Leopold (Click here) in the MuseumsQuartier.

» Neubau Design Mill around Kirchengasse, Lindengasse, Neubaugasse and Zollergasse, where artists and creatives put a fresh take on Viennese fashion and design.

» Nightlife Haunts Take the lead of locals and go west to the Gürtel to party at happening bars, like Chelsea (Click here), Loft (Click here) and Rhiz (Click here).

Getting There & Away

» U-Bahn Useful U-Bahn stops include Museumsquartier and Volkstheater on the U2 line. The U3 Neubaugasse and Zieglergasse stops, and the U6 stops Burggasse Stadthalle and Thaliastrasse are best for accessing Neubau.

» Tram Trams 1, 2 and D race you around the Ringstrasse, stopping at Rathaus, Dr-Karl-Renner-Ring and Parlament en route. The 49 line trundles from Dr-Karl-Renner-Ring through Neubau, with handy stops including Stiftgasse, Siebensterngasse and Neubaugasse/Westbahnstrasse.

MATTHEW DIXON / GETTY IMAGES ©

TOP SIGHT

KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM

The Habsburgs built many a bombastic palace but, artistically speaking, the Kunsthistorisches Museum is their magnum opus. Occupying a neoclassical building as sumptuous as the art it contains, the museum takes you on a time-travel treasure hunt – from classical Rome to Egypt and the Renaissance. If time is an issue, skip straight to the Old Master paintings in the Picture Gallery. There’s enough art here to last anyone a lifetime, so all the more reason to return.

DON’T MISS…

» Dutch Golden Age paintings

» Italian, Spanish & French collection

» Kunstkammer

» Offering Chapel of Ka-ni-nisut

PRACTICALITIES

» Museum of Fine Arts

» OFFLINE MAP GOOGLE MAP

» www.khm.at

» 01, Maria-Theresien-Platz

» adult/under 19yr €14/free

» 10am-6pm Tue-Sun, to 9pm Thu

» Museumsquartier, Volkstheater

Picture Gallery

The Kunsthistorisches Museum’s vast Picture Gallery is by far and away the most impressive of its collections. Devote at least an hour or two to exploring its feast of Old Master paintings.

Dutch, Flemish & German Painting

First up is the German Renaissance, where Lucas Cranach the Elder stages an appearance with engaging Genesis tableaux such as Paradise (1530) and Adam and Eve (1520). The key focus, though, is the prized Dürer collection. Dürer’s powerful compositions, sophisticated use of light and deep feeling for his subjects shine through in masterful pieces such as Portrait of a Venetian Lady (1505), the spirit-soaring Adoration of the Trinity (1511) and the macabre Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand (1508).

Rubens throws you in the deep end of Flemish baroque painting next, with paintings rich in Counter-Reformation themes and mythological symbolism. The monumental Miracle of St Francis Xavier (1617), which used to hang in Antwerp’s Jesuit church, the celestial The Annunciation (1610), the Miracles of St Ignatius (1615) and the Triptych of St Ildefonso (1630) all reveal the iridescent quality and linear clarity that underscored Rubens’ style. Mythological masterworks move from the gory, snake-riddled Medusa (1617) to the ecstatic celebration of love Feast of Venus (1636).

In 16th- and 17th-century Dutch Golden Age paintings, the desire to faithfully represent reality through an attentive eye for detail and compositional chiaroscuro is captured effortlessly in works by Rembrandt, Ruisdael and Vermeer. Rembrandt’s perspicuous Self-Portrait (1652), showing the artist in a humble painter’s smock, Van Ruisdael’s palpable vision of nature in The Large Forest (1655) and Vermeer’s seductively allegorical The Art of Painting (1665), showing Clio, Greek muse of history, in the diffused light of an artist’s studio, are all emblematic of the age.

The final three rooms are an ode to the art of Flemish baroque master Van Dyck and Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Van Dyck’s keenly felt devotional works include the Vision of the Blessed Herman (1630), in which the Virgin and kneeling monk are bathed in radiant light, and Madonna and Child with St Rosalie, Peter and Paul (1629). An entire room is given over to Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s vivid depictions of Flemish life and landscapes, alongside his biblical star attraction – The Tower of Babel (1563).

The Habsburgs liked to make an entrance and this is one of their finest. As you climb the ornate main staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, your gaze is drawn to the ever-decreasing circles of the cupola and marble columns guide the eye to delicately frescoed vaults, roaring lions and Antonio Canova’s mighty statue of Theseus Defeating the Centaur (1805). Austrian legends Hans Makart and the brothers Klimt have left their hallmark between the columns and above the arcades – the former with lunette paintings, the latter with gold-kissed depictions of women inspired by Greco-Roman and Egyptian art.

Italian, Spanish & French Painting

The first three rooms here are given over to key exponents of the 16th-century Venetian style: Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. High on your artistic agenda here should be Titian’s Nymph and Shepherd (1570), elevating the pastoral to the mythological in its portrayal of the futile desire of the flute-playing shepherd for the beautiful maiden out of his reach. Veronese’s dramatic depiction of the suicidal Roman heroine Lucretia (1583), with a dagger drawn to her chest, and Tintoretto’s Susanna at her Bath (1556), watched by two lustful elders, are other highlights.

Devotion is central to Raphael’s Madonna of the Meadow (1506) in room 4, one of the true masterpieces of the High Renaissance, just as it is to the Madonna of the Rosary (1603), a stirring Counter-Reformation altarpiece by Italian baroque artist Caravaggio in the next room. Room 7 is also a delight, with compelling works such as Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s anthropomorphic paintings inspired by the seasons and elements, including fruit-filled Summer (1563), Winter (1563) and Fire (1566). Look out, too, for Venetian landscape painter Canaletto’s Schönbrunn (1761), meticulously capturing the palace back in its imperial heyday.

Of the artists represented in the final rooms dedicated to Spanish, French and English painting, the undoubted star is Spanish court painter Velázquez. Particularly entrancing is his almost 3D portrait of Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress (1673), a vision of voluminous silk and eight-year-old innocence. Gainsborough’s Suffolk Landscape (1748), with its feather-light brushwork and suffused colours, and French baroque painter Nicolas Poussin’s turbulent Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (1639) also demand attention.

Kunstkammer

Imagine the treasures you could buy with brimming coffers and the world at your fingertips. The Habsburgs did just that, filling their Kunstkammer (cabinet of art and curiosities) with an encyclopaedic collection of the rare and the precious: from narwhal-tusk cups to table holders encrusted with fossilised shark’s teeth. In March 2013 the Kunstkammer reopened to much acclaim, with 20 themed rooms opening a fascinating window on the obsession with collecting curios in royal circles in Renaissance and baroque times.

The biggest crowd-puller here is Benvenuto Cellini’s allegorical Saliera (salt cellar), commissioned by Francis I of France in 1540, which is exquisitely hand-crafted from rolled gold, ivory and enamel. Among the Kunstkammer’s other top-drawer attractions are the wildly expressive early 17th-century ivory sculpture Furie (Master of the Furies), the serenely beautiful Krumauer Madonna (1400), a masterpiece of the Bohemian Gothic style, and Gasparo Miseroni’s lapis lazuli Dragon Cup (1570), a fiery beast glittering with gemstones.

Egyptian & Near Eastern Collection

Decipher the mysteries of Egyptian civilisations with a chronological romp through this miniature Giza of a ground-floor collection, beginning with predynastic and Old Kingdom treasures. Here the exceptionally well-preserved Offering Chapel of Ka-ni-nisut spells out the life of the high-ranking 5th dynasty official in reliefs and hieroglyphs. The Egyptian fondness for nature and adornment finds expression in artefacts such as a monkey-shaped kohl container and fish-shaped make-up palette.

Stele, sacrificial altar slabs, jewellery boxes, sphinx busts and pharaoh statues bring to life the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. The Egyptian talent for craftsmanship shines in pieces such as a turquoise ceramic hippo (2000 BC) and the gold seal ring of Ramses X (1120 BC). The Late Period dips into the land of the pharaohs, at a time when rule swung from Egypt to Persia. Scout out the 3000-year-old Book of the Dead Chonsu-mes, the polychrome mummy board of Nes-pauti-taui and Canopic jars with lids shaped like monkey, falcon and jackal heads.

Stone sarcophagi, gilded mummy masks and busts of priests and princes transport you back to the Ptolemaic and Greco-Roman period. In the Near Eastern collection, the representation of a prowling lion from Babylon’s triumphal Ishtar Gate (604–562 BC) is the big attraction.

Greek & Roman Antiquities

This rich Greek and Roman repository reveals the imperial scope for collecting classical antiquities, with 2500 objects traversing three millennia from the Cypriot Bronze Age to early medieval times.

Cypriot and Mycenaean Art catapults you back to the dawn of western civilisation, 2500 years ago. The big draw here is the precisely carved votive statue of a man wearing a finely pleated tunic. Among the muses, torsos and mythological statuettes in Greek Art is a fragment from the Parthenon’s northern frieze showing two bearded men. The arts flourished in Hellenistic times, evident in exhibits like the Amazonian Sarcophagus , engraved with warriors so vivid you can almost hear their battle cries. In pre-Roman Italy, look for sculptures of Athena, funerary crowns intricately wrought from gold, and a repoussé showing the Titans doing battle with the Gods.

Egyptian & Near Eastern Collection (Click here)
SYLVAIN SONNET / GETTY IMAGES ©

The sizeable Roman stash includes the 4th-century AD Theseus Mosaic from Salzburg, a polychrome, geometric marvel recounting the legend of Theseus. You’ll also want to take in the captivating 3rd-century AD Lion Hunt relief and the 1st-century AD Gemma Augustea , a sardonyx bas-relief cameo. Early medieval show-stoppers include the shimmering golden vessels from the Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós, unearthed in 1799 in what is now Romania.

The first hall of the coin collection presents medals of honour, first used in Renaissance Italy around 1400, and showcases gold and silver House of Habsburg wonders. The second hall takes a brisk trot through monetary time, from the birth of the coin in Lydia in the 7th century BC to the 20th century. Look out for classical coins, like the stater embellished with a lion head, in circulation under Alyattes, King of Lydia (619–560 BC), and Athenian coins featuring the goddess Athena and her pet owl. The third hall is devoted to one-off exhibitions.

YADID LEVY / GETTY IMAGES ©