Palais du Belvédère

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On Monday, we headed to the Belvedere!  What a beautiful museum.  It is composed of two main buildings plus some outliers.  It is within the city of Vienna.  

 We only went to the upper building.  Outside the building, they had a number of pieces by the Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei.  I love his art and have now seen it in a number of venues. Most of his art that I have seen is paintings.  This was all "sculptures" or other 3-D art, which was cool.

 Below is a picture of life jackets made to look like lotus flowers to represent the refugee crisis.  Unfortunately, we could not take picture of the rest of the art since it was in the museum.  

I wanted to go there to see the Klimt masterpieces again.  I had not seen many of them since early in the creation of this blog (one of the first ten posts!!).  I saw them when I had visited the Neue Gallery in New York City.  

 think this museum had the highest concentration of paintings on my "1001 paintings" ever -- three in one room! 

 The Klimts were stunning.  Seeing them so concentrated was fantastic.  You could easily compare and contrast and understand the flow of his work.  They were nicely laid out in the room too with ample space around them to make it an enjoyable viewing experience.  I really liked the painting of Judith.  I had never noticed that the "frame" was actually painted in.  I also had never noticed that she was holding a head.  It turns out the longer more accurate name is Judith and the head of Holofernes.  His use of the gold leaf was intricate and adds vibrancy to the painting.  

 They don't let you take a picture with the real thing, but they do provide another one for a selfie and/or a picture taken by your husband!!


The Belvedere was also focusing on Franz Joseph I with an exhibit, Franz Joseph: The Emperor and the Belvedere, while we were visiting the museum.  It had a number of paintings of the emperor and his wife.  It also highlighted all of the art that had been acquired during his reign.  

 We also really enjoyed walking around the grounds of the museum.  I bet it is beautiful in the summer too.



I do recommend that they get more bathrooms (I cannot believe I am highlighting this!), but it was three for an entire museum!

 We really enjoyed the museum -- definitely worth the stop and seeing the Klimts!

 Times visited: 1
Time in museum: 1 hr
Overall: A-
Location: Prinz Eugen-Straße 27, 1040 Wien, Austria

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