Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna

As a “Palace of Fine Arts,” the Habsburgs commissioned the Kunsthistorisches Museum to house their unparalleled art collections. Designed by the renowned architects Gottfried Semper and Carl von Hasenauer in the Italian Renaissance style, the museum was ceremoniously opened in 1891.

Prominent painters such as Gustav Klimt contributed to parts of the ceiling frescoes. But the true treasures are the artworks amassed through the Habsburg emperors’ passion for collecting—objects from ancient Egypt, antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern era.

The museum boasts magnificent sculptures, priceless masterpieces by the greatest Renaissance and Baroque artists, and the world’s largest and most comprehensive Bruegel collection. Masterpieces from the Habsburg dynasty’s reign and much more find their place not only in the Kunsthistorisches Museum but also in its affiliated houses and castles.