Museum of Art History
The Kunsthistorisches Museum—“Museum of Art History”—opened around 1891, when Emperor Franz Joseph I also inaugurated Vienna’s Natural History Museum across Maria-Theresien-Platz. The museum’s main building and the Natural History Museum were constructed between 1871 and 1891 to plans by Gottfried Semper and Baron Karl von Hasenauer, creating a deliberate home for the Habsburgs’ art holdings on the Ring Road. Today the institution is recognized as Austria’s largest art museum, crowned by an octagonal dome about 60 metres high. Inside, the decoration matches the ambition of that original commission: marble, stucco ornamentation, gold-leaf, and murals frame collections that focus on Habsburg portraits and armour, as well as works associated with Emperor Rudolph II and Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. In the picture gallery, you can trace major Renaissance milestones—from Jan van Eyck’s *Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati* (c. …
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