Belvedere Palace

Very clever!  They set up this very large framed mirror so that visitors
can take a photo that shows the Upper  palace behind them and Vienna in the background.

There are a lot of palaces and museums in Vienna -- next year I will make a concerted effort to see more of them.  Yesterday, Mark, Maggie and I visited the Schloss Belvedere, which consists of two Baroque palaces, the Upper and Lower palaces.  The two palaces were built in the 18th century as the summer residence of general Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), which were designed by Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt, one of the most successful Baroque architects of that time.

We only had time to see the Upper palace, which has been turned into a museum. 

 

At this museum we saw the original Gustav Klimt paintings of "The Kiss" and "Judith" among others he painted, along with paintings by Manet, Monet, Schiele, Waldmuller, and Van Gogh. Their brochure states that the "Upper Belvedere houses the greatest collection of Austrian art dating from the Middle Ages to the present day."

While  they would not let me take photos inside the palace, we did take photos of the palace's exterior and beautiful gardens, which were established to look like the gardens at the Versailles Palace in France.  We enjoyed our long stroll through the gardens to finally get to the Upper palace and its beautiful paintings: