Sunday, 30-June-2024


After adventure and excitement, I finished my quest for the Art History museum in Vienna.

I’m going to be using the term “opulent” a lot in my blog posts about Vienna, I can tell. But really, there’s no better term to use to describe this museum… it was, simply put, opulent. In every sense of the word. I mean, Vienna is already full of beautiful architecture and art everywhere I looked and walked – how could the museum of art history not step that up a few levels?

I walked in, gawked at my surroundings for a few minutes, then tracked down the cafe – it was the early afternoon, after all, and I’d been exploring around the city in the heat of the day for a few hours at that point. I needed some food, quite a bit of water, and a coffee. Thankfully, I found all three without any difficulty, and a short wait in line later I was sitting and staring at the glorious paintings and marble surrounding me.

It was interesting – I mentioned in my “Exploring Vienna” post that I felt a connection to my Grandfather in Cafe Central, since he’d likely gone there at least once with his parents… Well, the Art History museum had a similar feeling for me. It had been founded in 1891, and although I doubt the cafe was quite that old I still felt confident that, at one point or another, my Grandfather had been roughly where I was now. Knowing his own love for the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, probably multiple times.

Seeing the room around me, it helped me understand where he had been coming from in his life. He’d grown up in Vienna, likely seeing the absolute opulence and majesty as the norm. Then, to see Vienna devolve into Nazism and hate so quickly, only to have to flee to England and the United States… It was interesting, trying to set myself into that mindset and to see how that would have affected me.

I kept those thoughts in mind as I finished my meal and traversed the museum.

From Egypt to Rome, into the treasures of the Hapsburgs and onward into stunning paintings and relics from throughout the city’s history. There was one exhibit on The Fugger’s family that I didn’t quite understand, but aside from that the museum was absolutely glorious – a lesson in beauty and regality. I even found a whole segment hidden on the top floor on Cartoons! Though… not cartoons that you or I would recognize as such, instead being massive tapestries depicting specific events and battles of the Hapsburg Dynasty.

I wandered, perused, and enjoyed the grandeur surrounding me. I appreciated the air conditioning, finished my explorations, and braced myself for the heat of the early evening on my walk home.