Vienna’s Masterpieces - The Art collections of an imperial capital

Vienna’s Masterpieces - The Art collections of an imperial capital

• Focuses on the best of the art in the city – painting, sculpture and decorative arts.
• Also the key architectural monuments and characteristic streetscape.
• Perfectly located 5-star heritage hotel.

INTRO

ITINERARY

DETAILS

GALLERY

PRE & POST

INTRODUCTION

Hofburg, Vienna.

Vienna possesses one of the most significant concentrations of great art to be found anywhere in the world. There are Old Master paintings of the highest quality, indigenous early-modern art and design of the highest importance, furnishings and decorative arts from many civilizations, precious regalia and goldwork without peer – and much else besides. This tour includes all of the main art museums and many of the smaller or less-visited ones. There is also more than a passing glance at the most important works of architecture, and the lecturer’s input touches on the fascinating and turbulent history of Austria and her empire.

The seat of the Habsburgs, pre-eminent city of the Holy Roman Empire and capital of a vast multinational agglomeration of territories, Vienna is appropriately equipped with magnificent buildings and broad boulevards. But cheek by jowl with grandiloquent palaces and trumpeting churches are narrow alleys and ancient courtyards which survive from the mediaeval city. In Vienna the magnificent mixes with the unpretentiously charming, imperial display with the Gemütlichkeit of the coffee houses. Diversity and delight.

ITINERARY

DAY 1

Fly at c. 9.15am from London Heathrow to Vienna (Austrian Airlines) and drive to the hotel in the heart of the city. After a light lunch, walk to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum), one of the world’s greatest collections of Old Masters. For this first visit concentrate on the northern schools, especially the early Netherlandish school, the famous Bruegels, Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer.

DAY 2

The splendid Belvedere Palace now houses the national collection of Austrian art, mediaeval, Baroque, Biedermeier and Secessionist – Klimt and Schiele. An afternoon walk around the Roman and mediaeval core of the city takes in the Cathedral, the greatest of Gothic buildings in the Danubian lands, distinguished for its late mediaeval sculpture, and the Hofburg, the sprawling winter palace of the Habsburgs. The precious regalia and objets d’art in the Schatzkammer (Treasury) are the best of their kind.

DAY 3

In a park a few minutes from the hotel see the Art Nouveau former metro stations by Otto Wagner and the great Baroque Church of St Charles. The excellent Vienna Museum traces the city’s history through art and artefacts. In the afternoon visit the Secession Building which contains Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, the magnificent Great Hall of the Court Library and the excellent if small gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts. Among its holdings is a masterpiece by Hieronymus Bosch.

DAY 4

Another walk through picturesque streets and squares passes private palaces and public buildings such as the Gothic Revival city hall and the Neo-Classical Parliament. The Leopold Collection comprises excellent examples of the arts from the turn of the nineteenth century. The afternoon is spent in the Kunsthistorisches Museum again, this time concentrating mainly on Italian pictures – Bellini, Titian, Bellotto. There is also the recently re-displayed Kunstkammer here, an outstanding collection of metalwork and sculpture.

DAY 5

Take a tram around the Ringstrasse, a boulevard encircling the inner city lined with magnificent palaces and institutions of the later nineteenth century. Visit the Museum of Applied Arts, an outstanding collection from all eras and places, well displayed. Walk back to the hotel through further enchanting streetscape. Leave the hotel at 3.00pm and return to Heathrow c. 6.40pm.