The story
The city museum of Vienna reopened on Karlsplatz in December 2023 after four years dark, its 1959 building by Oswald Haerdtl now carrying a cantilevered upper floor that seems to float above the old one. For the first time the permanent collection is free to enter.
What it tells is the story of one city, from Neolithic and Roman finds under the Danube plain up to the present. Along the way it holds a remarkable stretch of around 1900, when Vienna shaped much of what we call modern: Gustav Klimt's early portraits, Secession-era design, and the models and drawings for buildings that reshaped the Ringstrasse.
Among its treasures are original sculptures brought indoors from St. Stephen's Cathedral and from the Looshaus to survive the weather, so that a walk through the halls doubles as a walk through the streets outside.
