From Habsburg masterpieces to the Secession and postwar art, ten Vienna museums best split across separate days by era.
Vienna concentrates an unusual density of art around the Ringstrasse and the MuseumsQuartier: Habsburg-collected old masters and antiquities, the fin-de-siècle work of Klimt and Schiele, Secession architecture and the Wiener Werkstätte, and postwar contemporary art. This list traces a route through ten museums in roughly chronological order — starting with the imperial collections at the Kunsthistorisches Museum and Belvedere, moving through the works on paper at the Albertina, then on to the Leopold Museum, mumok, MAK, and finally Hundertwasser's Kunst Haus Wien.
The palace museums are large and the contemporary spaces rotate their shows often, so it helps to plan around that rhythm — pick one era per day rather than trying to cover everything at once. Note the differences in how each site operates before you go: the Belvedere's Upper and Lower Palace require separate tickets, and the Albertina rotates its works on paper regularly for conservation reasons.
