The most beautiful cities in Austria

Welcome to one of Europe’s most beautiful countries. Austria’s landscapes, regions and townscapes provide almost the full range of European variety in the centre of the continent. Austria is often associated, rightly, with winter sports, but there is so much more on offer. Its alpine areas are rugged and picturesque, but that’s far from being the whole story.

Visual arts

Vital to Austria’s Baroque and Rococo traditions are the interior painters and stuccoists, whose work graced Austria’s mighty abbeys as well as churches and palaces. In the 17th and 18th centuries the frescoes of Johann Michael Rottmayr (born on the Bavarian border but active in Salzburg, Vienna and Melk), Paul Troger, Martin Johann ‘Kremser’ Schmidt and Franz Anton Maulbertsch were under Italian influence but were Austrians working for Austrian patrons taking the place of Italian artists.

In the second half of the 19th century, Hans Makart emerged as the leading Austrian painter and a central figure in privileged Vienna circles. His aesthetic and consciousness of history led to Makart being in demand in the decorative arts, although he also represented eroticism.

All this influenced the painter Gustav Klimt, who was a leader of the Wiener Secession before breaking away with compatriots such as Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. Klimt came to occupy a similar status to Makart in Vienna as a decorative artist and his works, along with some of those of the controversial Expressionist Schiele, can be viewed in the city’s Leopold Museum and Belvedere Museum. Kokoschka moved to Berlin, also pursuing Expressionism.

Vienna

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien: European masterpieces, sculpture and precious objects, antiquities, Egyptian and Near Eastern collection, arms and armour collection
Albertina: Impressionism, Modernism, graphical collections
Österreichische Galerie Belvedere: Medieval religious pieces, Renaissance and Baroque, Classicism, Modernism and avant garde
Wiener Secession: Art Nouveau
Leopold Museum: Modern Austrian art
Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier: Contemporary and modern art
Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK): Contemporary and modern art
Museum of Applied Arts (MAK)
KunstHausWien (Museum Hundertwasser): Contemporary art with a focus on ecology
Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien: Classical Modernism and avant-garde

Graz

Kunsthaus Graz: Modernism
Schloß Eggenberg: Baroque and Rococo furnishings, ceiling paintings
Landeszeughaus: Arms and armour collection

Salzburg

Residenzgalerie Salzburg: Painting from the 16th to the 20th centuries
DomQuartier Salzburg: Baroque state rooms, special exhibitions, cabinet of curiosities, sacred objects, archabbey collection
Museum der Moderne Salzburg: Art of the 20th and 21st centuries