Vienna has plenty of museums, palaces, and museums that used to be palaces. There are quite a few museums close to the Imperial Palace in City Center; three of them are actually side-by-side in a complex called Museum Quarter. We visited two out of the three; one is called Leopold Museum, with some works by the famous Austrian Gustav Klimt (so the art there is kinda modern) We also visited MUMOK, which is even more “modern”, with some works that I can’t tell if it is really art. At least the building itself looks interesting.
Southwest of the city center, we went to the Schonbrunn Palace by subway. This Palace is even more grand than the Imperial Palace. Too bad that they do not allow picture taking. So all I have is a few postcards to remind myself how beautiful the Grand Gallery is (or by visiting this site: http://austria-360.at/wien/page-grossegalerie.html) I did get to take pictures of the gardens behind the palace. The area for the gardens is just huge, with all those fountains, pools, and buildings. And even though it was in off season, the gardens were still in pretty good shape.
A little bit closer, south of city center, there is the Belvedere Palace, where the Austrian Gallery Belvedere is housed. They have some of the most famous works by Gustav Klimt, so I felt this is one of the must-do in Vienna. (Although Vincent wasn’t that impressed by Klimt’s The Kiss) Like the Schonbrunn Palace we visited, there is a nice garden between the two main buildings of Belvedere Palace.
