Kunsthistorisches Museum, Karlskirche, Zentralfriedhof

Take a seat, this one's going to take a while.

On Sunday I met up with Anna, a friend from Queen's whom I worked with as an iCon last year, and her housemate. They're traveling through Europe and were in Vienna until Monday. We were supposed to meet up at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History) when it opened, but the large lobby and groups of Japanese tourists led to us likely walking right past one another. I decided to tour the museum alone, and meet up with them at 1, which was our back-up plan.

I have already shown you the front of the museum, it is the one which is the mirror image of the Natural History Museum. Here's a picture of the Natural History Museum and Maria Theresa Platz which I took from the top floor of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. There are more pictures of the Maria Theresa statue later in this post.
The museum itself took almost 20 years to complete, which is not hard to believe, as it is a work of art in and of itself. All the walls are marble, and the ceilings are hand painted and covered in gold. The famous Austrian painter Gustav Klimt got his start paining the ceilings, which reflect his later work which relies heavily on gold embellishment. I couldn't decide which photos of the main entrance way and stairwell to include, so I included them all. One little disclaimer, there is a no-flash policy in the museum, so many of the photos are a little unfocused, but get the point across.
The hole in the domed roof looks up into the very expensive café on the second floor.
So here it is, definitive, albeit fuzzy proof that I am actually in Vienna. Apparently my camera couldn't figure out what to focus on, so it didn't focus on anything...
The first exhibit was ivory carvings belonging to the Hapsburgs. The amount of detail in these was astounding. Hard to believe that someone started with a tusk, and carved these. Especially when you consider that there's no room for mistakes, as you couldn't simply glue bits back on.
In this photo you can see the yellow-orange translucence of ivory. A lot of the pieces seemed to glow when back-lit.
One of the coolest pieces on display was this ivory ship complete with tiny ivory sailors. Sorry for the unfocused picture, but the low light combined with the glass cases made focusing near impossible without a tripod or the steady hand of a surgeon (which in my caffeine-addicted state, is far from the case).
There was then room upon room of incredible paintings. The rooms themselves were incredible, with 40 or 50ft high carved and gilt plaster ceilings. As I am as far from an Art-History student as you can get, this was one of the only paintings I recognised. It is the "Tower of Babel" by Pieter Brueghel. Here is a clearer version from Wikipedia. This is really an engineer's painting, because you get to see all the levels of structure and methods of construction; much more interesting than a portrait or a painting of flowers and a dead duck.
There were two artists in the museum painting copies of famous works of art. I sat for a few minutes and just watched them work. Having only ever painted with very unforgiving watercolours, it was terrifying to see them paint over 'finished' sections with large swaths of black, only to later go back and try again with the details. It was amazing to see how true to the original they could get. Apparently, the painter shown below talked to my friend Anna and told her that he thought Vienna was a disgusting city with no soul, built only to impress, as opposed to his beautiful home-town of Venice.
I took a lot of photos of paintings and galleries, but they all turned out really fuzzy. Some of the more impressive paintings were the giant altarpieces. There were two on display which were painted on single canvases easily 40ft tall and 30 ft wide, in giant golden frames.

The museum also contains a permanent exhibit of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian artifacts. The hall leading to the exhibit was lined with marble busts. Does anyone who lived with me at Queen's in first year think this looks remarkably like my neighbour, 'Toga' (Andrew Cardinal)? It kinda freaked me out.
The Museum was a treasure trove of plundered antiquities. I know it is wrong, but if it wasn't for the Hapsburgs taking all these artifacts from Italy and Greece, I wouldn't have been able to see them. Below is a display of amphorae from Ancient Greece. They were all painted in red and black glazes, with images of Greek gods, muses, and battles.
This picture shows the amount of detail that went into every ceiling, this is just one of dozens of rooms.
Just thought these helmets looked cool. The object in the centre is a mirror (in need of some polishing)
There was one room filled with busts of various people, ranging from this unknown boy to Julius Caesar.
This guy made me laugh. The circles are supposed to be ringlets of hair. When I think of ancient Roman senators, for some reason I don't think curly fro.
Julius Caesar and Octavian.
Every room was different, with styling matching its contents. This room held ancient Grecian stonework and mosaics. Notice how the arched ceilings look like the Roman ruins from Schönbrunn?
This guy has seen better days.The Egyptian section contains a number of large stone sarcophagi, may of which were in very good condition for being thousands of years old.
Everyone's a sucker for King Tut.
In a dark back corner, there was a collection of glazed tiles with no English description. I knew I recognized them from somewhere, but couldn't figure out where. When I got back, I went on Wikipedia and figured out that it's one of the 120 lions from from the Ishtar Gates, the gates to the inner city of ancient Babylon.
The intricately painted ceiling of the main room of the Egyptian exhibit is supported by granite columns taken from a temple in Egypt.
At 1, I waited outside for Anna and her friend, and took some pictures of Maria Theresa Platz, which is located between the two museums.
Thats Empress Maria Theresa on the throne at the top, with the Natural History Museum in behind.
When I finally met up with Anna and her friend I found out that they had toured the city with a guide book on Saturday and had therefore already seen everything I had prepared to show them. On Saturday Henrik had told me about visiting Karlskirche (St. Charles's Church), and how you could pay 4 Euros to go the top (the little cupola on top of the dome), so we decided to check it out.Here's the view looking up to the dome. The elevator to the right takes you to the horizontal platform, which supports the narrow stairway to the top. I know what you're thinking, "who would destroy a beautiful cathedral with this monstrosity of a tourist trap?" I later found out that it's only temporoary, and will only be in place until they raise enough money to complete the building restorations.
Here's some photos of the dome taken from the horizontal platform at the half-way point, which was still really high up. You wonder how the artisans could work up that high all day in the heat, supported only by wobbly wooden scaffolding.I don't have any photos of the city from the top, because a) the view was blocked by metal screens, and b) I was too terrified to take both hands off the railings long enough to steady a photo. Before you judge me, you must realise that there was a warning sign stating that only ten people at a time should go up. On the way up, we passed at least 15 people coming down, and as Anna is a civil engineer, and therefore has an informed opinion on structural safety, her comments of concern about how many people were up there freaked me out. I'm normally good with heights, just not when the whole structure bounces with people walking up the stairs, and I'm accompanied by a concerned civil engineer.

After Karlskirche we wandered around, and finally decided to go to the Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery) where all of the famous Austrian composers are burried. On our way there it started to pour rain, and then turned into a thunderstorm, but that wouldn't deter us, for long.
After waiting out the worst of it in a crumbling archway fileld with tombs, we ran to the large central building, which turned out to be a giant church. Looking back from where we had come, we noticed a tourbus pull over to the the side of the main street. We decided that tour bus = the good graves, so we waited for the rain to slow to a trickle and went to investigate. All the composers are together, we had walked right past them.

Ludwig van Beethoven

A Mozart memorial, as his unmarked grave at St.Marx Cemetery was lost.

Franz Schubert:

Eduard Strauss I and IIJosef Strauss

Johann Strauss I

Johannes Brahms

More interesting looking graves of random people.

Now that the blogspot photo uploader is agreeing with my computer again, expect future posts to have a lot more photos like this one. Especially when I get back from Budapest next week. The only thing I ask is that you add a comment, or two, this is kinda like PBS, except I don't have Betty White to make you feel guilty.

PS. Happy Birthday Megan (today, 11th) and Craig (Wednesday 13th).