Sunday in Vienna 

Today we began the day visiting the Belvedere Palace.  Today The Belvedere Palace houses the greatest collection of Austrian art dating from the Middle Ages to the present day, complemented by the work of international artists such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Max Beckmann. Highlights are the world’s largest collection of Gustav Klimt’s paintings (including the famous golden Art Nouveau icons the Kiss and Judith and works by Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka. The highlight for me were the works by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. I loved seeing The Kiss in real life. 

The Kiss


From The Belvedere we walked to The Hofburg Palace. For many centuries, the Vienna Hofburg was the centre of the Habsburg empire. Three museum attractions provide historically accurate insights into the tradition and daily life at court: the authentically-furnished Imperial Apartments, the tasteful Sisi Museum and the Silver Collection as a comprehensive collection of Imperial utilitarian objects. Empress Elisabeth’s private life is at the center of the exhibition: her rebellion against court ceremony, her escape into a beauty cult, her obsession with being slim, athletic performance, and effusive poetry. From the carefree time as a young girl in Bavaria to the surprising engagement with the Austrian emperor to her 1898 assassination in Geneva, the museum shows the restless life of the legendary empress.

The Imperial Apartments, Sisi Museum and the Silver Collection are amongst Vienna’s top sights, attracting around 600,000 visitors each year.

Our evening was spent listening to more beautiful music. The concert we went to was in the The Wiener Musikverein. It is  commonly shortened to Musikverein and  is a concert hall in the Innere Stadt borough of Vienna, Austria. It is the home to the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. We listened to three pieces of music – The Serenade fur Violin, Viola and Cello in D Major, op 8 by Beethoven; The Grand Concerto for Violin and Double Bass with the Orchestra by Bottesini; and the Stringquintet in C Minor, op 121 by Lachner. I think this has been my favorite concert so far. The concert hall seemed to be filled with local Austrians and not many tourists. All the men were in suits and the women were beautifully dressed. It was a short concert so managed dinner afterwards. 

The Inside of the Brahms Concert Hall at The Musikverein


Until next time

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