Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien | History, Collections, & Must-See Exhibits

The Kunsthistorisches Museum’s Picture Gallery is a stunning collection of 16th and 17th-century European masterpieces, featuring works by artists like Rembrandt, Titian, Rubens, and Vermeer. It showcases a wide range of styles, from Renaissance to Baroque, taking visitors on a journey through four centuries of art history. It’s a visual feast of color, emotion, and technique.

The Kunstkammer holds the Habsburg rulers’ imperial treasures collected over 1,000 years. The collection comprises over 2,000 rare and beautiful objects that range from ancient figurines and intricate gold sculptures to bizarre mechanical devices and elaborate clocks. They showcase the era’s blend of artistic exploration, scientific curiosity, and excellent craftsmanship.

Nine galleries at the museum are dedicated to artifacts from ancient Egypt, Nubia, Mesopotamia, and the Eastern Mediterranean, comprising 17,000 relics, including a 4,000-year-old Egyptian burial chamber, mummies, sarcophagi, scarabs,  pottery, jewellery, and other religious objects. The statuette of a blue Hippopotamus is one of the finest examples of fine glazed pottery from this period.

The Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities highlights Austria’s history when it was part of the Roman Empire. Its most unique and visually striking artifact is a beautiful 4th-century floor mosaic from a villa near Salzburg. You’ll also find intricately painted Greek vases, bronze statues of mythological figures, gold, silver, and bronze Roman jewellery, and ceramics from Cyprus.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum's coin collection, one of the world's five largest, dates back to the mid-16th century. It holds 600,000 pieces, with 2,000 on display, including coins, paper currency, medals, and medallions from regions spanning Western Europe to Byzantium, Persia, and China.

The museum’s Collection of Historic Musical Instruments dates back to the mid-16th century, when Archduke Ferdinand II began acquiring these treasures for the Habsburgs. The majority of the items hail from the late Italian Renaissance and early Baroque periods. If you're a music lover, you’ll recognize violins, lyres, harps, harpsichords, and fortepianos. The standout pieces though are the Rebecchino, a stringed instrument shaped like a female figure, the elegant Pedal Harp, and the whimsical flute clock.