Two Baroque palaces on a slope, with Klimt's Kiss in the upper one and the best view of Vienna's skyline from between them.
Prince Eugene of Savoy, the general who broke the Ottoman armies and won Austria its eighteenth century, built these two palaces as a summer residence between 1712 and 1723. They sit at either end of a formal garden on a slope, and the arrangement is the point: the Lower Belvedere is where he lived, the Upper is where he entertained, and the garden between them is a set of terraces designed to be looked at from both.
The Treaty re-establishing an independent Austria was signed in the Upper Belvedere in 1955, and photographs of Leopold Figl holding it up from the balcony are on every Austrian history syllabus.
The Upper Belvedere
This is the one with the collection everyone comes for: the world’s largest holding of Gustav Klimt, including The Kiss (1908) and Judith. The Kiss room is busy and managed, and it is still worth standing in front of.
Beyond Klimt there is strong Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, French Impressionists, Austrian Biedermeier, and a medieval collection. The building itself — the Marble Hall, the Sala Terrena with its atlantes — is part of the visit.
The Lower Belvedere
Used for temporary exhibitions, plus Eugene’s state rooms: the Marble Gallery, the Hall of Grotesques, the Golden Room. It is quieter and often more rewarding than the Upper if the exhibition suits you.
Belvedere 21
A separate building a short walk south, in a 1958 pavilion originally built for the Brussels World’s Fair, showing contemporary Austrian art.
The gardens
Free and open daily. The terraces, fountains and sphinxes are worth an hour on their own, and the view from the upper terrace over the parterre to the spire of St Stephen’s is the classic Vienna panorama.
Practicalities
Tickets are per building with combination options. Book online in summer for the Upper Belvedere. It is less crowded late in the afternoon than in the morning, which is the reverse of most Vienna museums.
More Landmarks
St Stephen's Cathedral
A tiled roof of a quarter of a million glazed tiles, a tower you climb by 343 steps, and catacombs full of Habsburg organs.
Schönbrunn Palace
Fourteen hundred rooms of Habsburg summer residence, a garden you can walk for free, and the oldest zoo in the world.
The Hofburg
The Habsburgs' winter residence for six centuries, now holding the Sisi Museum, the imperial silver and the crown jewels.