Albertina
Habsburg palace above the Augustinian Bastion holding a vast graphic art collection and modern painting.
The Albertina occupies the largest surviving residential palace of the Habsburgs, built on the remains of the Augustinian Bastion at the southern tip of the Hofburg. Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen moved his graphic collection here in 1795 and had the building reworked by Louis Montoyer; further alterations followed under Josef Kornhäusel. The collection passed to the Austrian state in 1919 and the palace was opened to the public. Damaged by bombing in 1945, it was restored and then thoroughly modernised for a reopening in 2003.
Its graphic collection is among the largest and most important anywhere, with roughly a million old master prints and some 60,000 drawings, including celebrated sheets by Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rubens and Schiele. Because works on paper are light-sensitive, they appear in rotating exhibitions rather than a permanent hang. Since 2007 the museum has also shown the Batliner Collection of French Impressionism and classical modernism, and visitors can walk through restored Habsburg state rooms on the palace's first floor.
Highlights
- Largest surviving Habsburg residential palace, above the Augustinian Bastion
- About a million prints and 60,000 drawings, including Dürer's Hare
- Batliner Collection spanning Monet to Picasso and Chagall
- Restored Habsburg State Rooms and Hans Hollein's cantilevered roof canopy
