Tour Details
- Duration
- 2.5 hours
- Product Type
- Tour
- Venues
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- Kunsthistorisches Museum
- Works by Brueghel & others
Photos & Highlights
- Highlights of Kunsthistorisches Museum
- Led by local art historian or scholar
Select a date
Tour Description
The immense Kunsthistorisches Museum stands alongside the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the British Museum as one of the great art collections in the world. In this Kunsthistorisches Museum tour, we'll join a local art historian to explore historical objects and artworks from the past seven millennia, from ancient Egypt to 20th-century Vienna Secession.
Kunsthistorisches Museum Tour with an Expert
Our visit is designed as an overview or "crash course,” with time spent in several of the major collections. One particular focus will be the picture gallery, featuring 16th and 17th-century paintings from Venice, the Netherlands, and Germany, including masters such as Titian, Vermeer, van Eyck, and Dürer. Inspired by the masterpieces hanging before us, we’ll discuss the visible differences between northern and southern European painting styles. We’ll also look at how and why the ruling Habsburgs collected certain works and will cast our imaginations outwards to reflect on the collection’s greater symbolism for imperial Austria. (Note, we discuss this topic further on our Schönbrunn Palace Tour.)
Navigating the Galleries
As an introduction to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, this walk and its route will be organically shaped by your preferences. From day to day, tour to tour, the specific course will shift according to the desires of the group and the scholarly interests of your guide—be it Greek and Roman antiquities, coins, decorative arts or large-scale paintings. Regardless of where our feet take us, we'll emerge with a deeper familiarity of the museum's rich collection and its symbolism during the centuries-long rule of the Habsburgs.
For a more focused look at the early 20th century try our Vienna Architecture Tour.
FAQ
Are museum tickets included?
Museum tickets will be automatically added to your cart during checkout. Please note: tickets are for standard admission only and do not include any special temporary exhibitions.
Museum tickets will be automatically added to your cart during checkout. Please note: tickets are for standard admission only and do not include any special temporary exhibitions.
Experts
Where You'll Start
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72 Reviews
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I was expecting a museum tour with the highlights of the collection visited and explained. Instead, Clemena gave us a tour based on the emergence of individualism in portraiture. While this was of some interest, and Clemena was clearly an expert on it, we wanted to understand and appreciate the collection - not just one topic. Partway thru the tour on of the other guests requested a top ten tour and it never happened in a organized fashion. But perhaps we did see the highlights.
Stuart
Dec 13, 2014
Our docent was very engaging and knowledgeable. I was a little disappointed, though, because I was expecting the tour to be as described, and I know that the tour will be shaped by the "intellectual proclivities of the guide" but she started out by telling us that the focus would be on portraits (which was not the stated purpose) and spent 30 minutes in the Egypt collection (which isn't even mentioned in the description). I really expected a focus on the 16th and 17th century paintings, as described. I left the group to try to do that on my own and rejoined at the end. I'm not criticizing the docent, who was wonderful, but the tour was not as described, although in fairness, I wasn't there for much of it, but relied on what she said she was going to do.
Mark
Nov 30, 2014
Lisa was excellent -- perfectly well-informed, funny, personable. It was delightful to spend time with her.
Jill
Jul 7, 2014
