Museums in Vienna

Vienna is a very culturally rich city and a true "treat" for culture lovers.

Because there are countless museums to visit in Vienna.

• The Natural History Museum: it is home to world-famous and unique objects, such as the 29,500-year-old Venus of Willendorf, the Steller’s sea cow that became extinct over 200 years ago, and enormous dinosaur skeletons.

Further highlights in the 39 exhibit halls include the world’s largest and oldest public collection of meteorites, including the spectacular “Tissint” meteorite from Mars, as well as the permanent anthropological exhibition on the origins and development of humans, and the new prehistoric exhibition with the Venus Cabinet and the Gold Cabinet. However, time does not stand still. That is why on the occasion of the museum’s 125th anniversary a new Digital Planetarium has been opened, featuring fulldome projection technology that will give new visitors the chance to embark on fascinating virtual journeys in stunning scientific detail to the edge of the Milky Way galaxy or Saturn’s rings. The museum’s departments are home to around 60 scientists carrying out fundamental research in a wide range of fields related to earth sciences, life sciences and human sciences. This makes the museum an important public institution and one of the largest non-university research centers in Austria.

 

• The Kunsthistorisches Museum: it is housed in its festive palatial building on Ringstraße and is crowned with an octagonal dome. It is the largest art museum in the country and one of the most important museums worldwide.

It was opened around 1891 at the same time as the Natural History Museum by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary. The two museums have similar exteriors and face each other across Maria-Theresien-Platz. The inside of the building is lavishly decorated with marble, stucco ornamentations, gold-leaf, and paintings.

• The Technical Museum: it exists since 1918. It shows various exhibits from the history of technology. There are numerous objects from the field of industry, railways and shipbuilding. There is, among other things, a large collection of historical musical instruments.
  
  
• The Museum of Applied Arts: also called The MAK is a museum and space of experimentation for applied arts at the interface of design, architecture, and contemporary art. Its core competence lies in a contemporary exploration of these fields aimed at revealing new perspectives and elucidating discourse at the edges of the institution's traditions.
  
  
• The Albertina: it houses one of Europe’s most important compilations of Modernist art in the form of the Batliner Collection.

Its permanent display starts off with such artists of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism as Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Gauguin. Further highlights include examples of German Expressionism, with the groups of Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, and the art of New Objectivity, with works by Wacker, Sedlacek, and Hofer. An in-depth focus on Austrian art comprises works by Kokoschka and paintings by Egger-Lienz. The great diversity of the Russian avant-garde is represented by paintings by Goncharova, Malevich, and Chagall.

The presentation is topped off by numerous chefs-d’oeuvre by Picasso, ranging from his early Cubist pictures and works from his mature period of the 1940s to superb prints that have not yet been exhibited and paintings from his experimental late period.

• The House of Music: it is a sound museum in the historic part of Vienna's city center.
  
  
• The Jewish Museum: at Palais Eskeles it focus on Jewish religion, tradition and Jewish history in Austria. The permanent exhibition “Our city! Jewish Vienna – Then to Now” shows the difficult path of Jewish Vienna from 1945 to the present day. At the second museum at Judenplatz one sees the excavations of a synagogue and temporary exhibitions.
  
  
• The Museumsquartier: Spread over 90,000m2 in central Vienna and encompassing 60 cultural institutions, the MuseumsQuartier Wien is one of the largest districts for contemporary art and culture in the world. Nothing is off limits at the MuseumsQuartier. Historic architecture meets contemporary design. High culture meets subcultures. The spectrum ranges from fine art, architecture, music, fashion, theater, dance, literature, children’s culture, game culture, and street art to design and photography.
  
  
• The Hofburg: There are various parts of the Hofburg, which are used as museums. The most visited areas are:

The Sisi Museum, the Imperial Treasury, the Spanish Riding School and the Austrian National Library.

 

No matter if you are into the history of technology, history, art, nature or music - with around 200 museums, Vienna offers every visitor to the city a museum to suit her or his taste.

If we have aroused your interest in the diversity of the Vienna museums, send us an inquiry for your cultural Vienna holiday.