Kunsthistorischemuseum

That's German for art history museum. The KHM is one of our favorite museums. It was one of the first purpose-built public museums, it's beautiful (the Hapsburgs spared no expense in building it), they collected art for 700 years, and the collection is much to our liking with all its Cranachs and Breughels and Arcimboldos and others.

Kunsthistorischemuseum, part of the MuseumsQuartier

Marie Theresa presiding over it all

Looking up into the dome, as everyone does upon entering the building

Somebody killing a centaur

Cranach's "Judith"; compare Klimt's (earlier

post)

Lots of painters around

View from our lunch table, looking down from the dome

area, 2nd floor

Elder Breughel's Tower of Babel; after a few weeks in

Poland, Czech Republic, and now Hungary, we're really

beginning to relate to the Babel thing; fortunately, so far,

enough people speak enough English...

Another large Breughel

Breughel's "Hunters in Snow," said to be the first European

painting to depict snow

And, Breughel's "Conversion of Paul" (fairly well buried in

the larger canvass)

Vicki really likes Arcimboldos; I think

they're scary

Caravaggio's "Virgin of the Rosary"; I

thought the "Ascension of Salvador and

Gala" (Dali; see posts from Spain) was

the first work of art to depict dirty feet, but

no, it was Caravaggio, 300 years earlier

Half the KHM is its classical collection, which nearly rivals
the British Museum; what's especially cool about the KHM
is that each room is designed and decorated in accordance
with its artifacts

Aristotle

Display of Roman busts

Collection of Etruscan helmets

Second-largest ancient cameo yet found

Heuriger

One of the things one does in Vienna is journey out to the surrounding hills and vineyards to visit a heuriger, a wine garden right on the vineyards, to drink the new wine. The fashion began when the emperor exempted new wine from taxation. Such is the power to shape behavior and society through taxation. We took trams, subways, and buses out to Neustift am Walde.

Where a three-day street fair had been going on (we'd had

to detour around it on the way in to Vienna)

And found a table at this heuriger: Fuhrgassle-Huber

The wine does not have to travel far

View from our table, which we shared over the course of

the evening with Austrians, Poles, others

Dinner; we split some of the pig and half of one of the

chickens, and some potato salad, and, of course, a few mugs

of the fresh white wine

Vicki, contented with the foregoing and now

apple strudel mit cream (note empty wine

mug)

Things really got lively when the old Austrian band showed

up

The street party continued as we left

Prater, 2010

Vienna's old amusement part, the Prater, is still going strong. Not a theme park, and nothing terribly beautiful nor exotic, but more rides than any other park I've seen. Vicki says we didn't go to the Prater on previous visits; I say we did.

For many years, the world's largest

As seen in...

Lots of other rides

Lots

Vicki just had to go on this one

She's up there somewhere, spinning around in dual orbits, upside down

And at the Prater we established an important new precedent: that Mark does not have to go on these 

things

Vienna State Opera

Another of the things we had never before done in Vienna was tour the Vienna State Opera. It was one of the best such tours we have done. The guide was exceptionally knowledgeable about the building, opera, and music generally.

Vienna State Opera, constructed in the 1860s, damaged in

the war, restored 1955-65

While waiting for the English tour to begin,

we tried on some of the costumes

I know, it's just not my color

Largest stage in Europe; they say you could fit St. Stephen's

inside it

Ditto

A meeting room in the Emperor's suite;

available for hire

In the main intermission hall they display

busts of all the great opera composers,

you know, Meyerbeer, Marschner,

Spontini (!)...but not Wagner...this is a small

bust in one of the subsidiary lounges...

the guide explained that the music critic

Eduard Hanslick had chosen those to be

honored...Wagner's fiercest contemporary

critic

View of the stage from center balcony

Side boxes

In the boxes, each seat has its own little flip-

up monitor to read the translated libretto

The dome and chandelier

Stage view from the floor

House view from floor

St. Stephen's Cathedral (Vienna, 2010)

Our next stop, moving around by bus, tram, and subway (we bought a 72 hour Vienna card, good mostly for transportation), was the old town center and St. Stephen's Cathedral. St. Stephen's was damaged in WWII but very faithfully restored. Alas, a mass was going on inside, so we could not wander as freely as we usually do. Well, it was Sunday.

Twin towers, scaffolding

Interior looking to main altar

Subsidiary altar

A ray of light...

Carving on column

South side, big tower, and the tiled roof for which

St. Stephen's is most famous

The big tower

Gargoyle

Another, with tiles

Nick-named "Jesus with a toothache"

More of the main tower and roof

The city's main horse carriage port; note the building of

shops built right up to the cathedral's north side, just like

in Medieval times....

Vienna's Belvedere Palace

We left Moravia after the Slavic Epic, spent the night at a very nice municipal stellplatz in Stockauer and arrived in Vienna by noon, setting up camp at Camping Wien West, very close to the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods). (Weeny world, as Vicki calls it). Our first sightseeing stop was the Belvedere Palace, now an art museum, but originally a gift of the emperor to Eugene of Savoy, Frederick the Great's teacher, and who, along with the Duke of Marlborough, defeated Louis XIV's armies at Blenheim. Important lesson, learned in England and now Austria: if you really want to get ahead in life, defeat Louis the XIV's armies. (Or Napoleon's). The Belvedere is nice, but can't hold a candle to Blenheim Palace, however. Almost nothing can. The art collection at the Belvedere appears mostly stuff that did not make it to the Kunsthistorischemuseum, nice Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, plus a whole lot of Vienna's dynamic duo, Klimt and Schiele, the major reason for going other than the view of the old city. It's one of the places in Vienna to which we had not been before. The Belvedere has a no pix policy, so the Klimts and Schiele below were snatched off the web.

The Belvedere, from the backside (lots of construction going on)

Klimt's Judith, another one of which 
we'll  see at the Kunsthistorischemuseum

Klimt's Kiss

Schiele

Belvedere gardens and view of old Vienna

Mixed messages