Kunsthistorisches Museum
Twelve Bruegels, Vermeer’s Art of Painting, and the emperors’ treasure chamber
The Kunsthistorisches Museum was built to hold what the Habsburgs had spent four centuries collecting, and Franz Joseph gave it a building to match: a palace on the Ringstrasse of marble, gold leaf and a great domed hall, finished in 1891 and facing its identical twin, the Natural History Museum, across Maria-Theresien-Platz. Before you look at a single painting, stand on the main staircase and look up. The spandrels above you were painted by Gustav Klimt in his early twenties, working alongside his brother Ernst and Franz Matsch. The museum’s first masterpiece is its own decoration.
Start with the Bruegels
The Picture Gallery holds twelve paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the largest gathering of his work anywhere in the world. Hunters in the Snow is here — three men and their dogs trudging over a ridge into the first great winter landscape in European painting — along with The Tower of Babel, Children’s Games, The Peasant Wedding and The Fight Between Carnival and Lent. Nothing else in the building draws a crowd like this room, so make it your first stop rather than your last.
Then the rest of it
The gallery around it is one of the finest in Europe: Vermeer’s The Art of Painting, Raphael, Caravaggio, Velázquez’s portraits of the Spanish infantas painted for the Vienna court, Rubens, Titian, Rembrandt, Dürer. A floor below, the Kunstkammer is a different pleasure altogether — room after room of what the emperors kept for themselves, including Benvenuto Cellini’s Saliera, a gold salt cellar the size of a shoebox and the only goldsmith’s work that survives from his hand. Beyond it sit the Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection, displayed among original columns brought from Egypt, the Greek and Roman antiquities, and the coin cabinet.
Timing, and the café
Two to three hours covers the Picture Gallery and the Kunstkammer without hurrying. Thursday runs until nine in the evening and those are the calmest hours of the week. Whenever you go, stop halfway: the café sits directly beneath the cupola, on the landing between the two wings, and it is one of the few rooms in Vienna where the ceiling is better than the cake.
Highlights
- Twelve Bruegels in one gallery, including Hunters in the Snow and The Tower of Babel
- Vermeer’s The Art of Painting
- The Kunstkammer, and Cellini’s golden Saliera
- Klimt’s early paintings in the spandrels of the grand staircase
- The Egyptian collection, shown among original columns brought from Egypt
Good to know
- Open daily 10:00–18:00, with Thursday evenings to 21:00 — the quietest hours of the week
- Rucksacks, umbrellas and coats go in the free cloakroom or lockers; there is no luggage storage
- Photography for private use is fine without flash or tripod; individual works may be marked otherwise
- Under-19s enter free — no online ticket needed, just register at the entrance
- Step-free entry at Burgring 5, lifts to every floor, free wheelchairs if reserved a day ahead
Visitor information
- Opening hoursDaily 10:00–18:00 · Thursdays to 21:00
- Typical visit2–3 hours
- LocationMaria-Theresien-Platz, 1010 Vienna · 1st · Innere Stadt
- Getting thereU2/U3 Volkstheater; trams 1, 2, D and 71 to Burgring; buses 2A and 57A
Did you know?
Photographs
Booking conditions
Timed entry: your ticket is valid for the date and time slot you choose at checkout. Arrive a few minutes early; most attractions stop admitting visitors 30–60 minutes before closing. Tickets are non-refundable, non-changeable and non-transferable once confirmed, in line with each attraction’s own conditions. The price shown on the page is the total price — nothing is added at checkout. If anything is wrong with your order, email us and we will sort it out.
