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Belvedere Palace (by Lukas von Hildebrant), including the palace grounds, is one of the largest Baroque style palaces in Europe. This palace was designed for the victorious Austrian general Eugene of Savoy, who achieved great success against the Ottoman Empire. It had become the summer residence of Prince Eugene between 1714 - 1716. The palace is built on a hill, the Upper Palace on the hilltop and the Lower Palace, with its wonderful gardens, below. The view from the Upper Palace later led to its name Belvedere: "beautiful view". The Symmetrical Gardens in French style bridge a distance of 1 km between the two palaces. Today, the Upper Belvedere is used as the Austrian Gallery (Austrian and International Art of the 19th & 20th centuries) and houses the Austrian Museum of Baroque Art.
Belvedere Austrian Gallery
The Austrian Gallery focuses on Austrian art from the 19th and 20th Centuries. There were several styles of painting during the 19th Century, and many of them are represented here: Classicism, Romanticism, Biedermeier, Historicism and perhaps most famously, Impressionism. While the Austrian Gallery has a wonderful collection of paintings in all these styles it is perhaps most famous for its collection of Turn of the Century, Jugenstil and Secession Art, including Austria’s most extensive Gustav Klimt exhibit. Other artists of the period represented here are Egon Schiele, Koloman Moser, and Oskar Kokoschka, amongst others.
Austrian Museum of Baroque Art
The Baroque Museum was previously located in the Lower Belvedere Palace, but was moved to the East Wing of the Upper Belvedere in 2007. Here, one can see some of the most important Austrian art works of the Baroque period, including sculptures by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt and Georg Raphael Donner, paintings by Paul Troger and Daniel Gran, as well as masterpieces by Franz Anton Maulbertsch.
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