Moments from Albertina Museum

The Albertina takes its name from Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen, an Austrian nobleman who spent the late eighteenth century quietly assembling one of the greatest collections of prints and drawings ever put together by one person, more than a million sheets by the time it was done, including Durer's Young Hare and his Praying Hands, two of the most reproduced drawings in art history. The collection lives inside a former Habsburg palace on the edge of Vienna's old town, renovated in the early 2000s by architect Hans Hollein, who added a striking cantilevered titanium canopy over the entrance that still divides opinion among Viennese purists.

Because works on paper are fragile and light-sensitive, the Durers and their contemporaries only come out of storage periodically rather than hanging permanently, so check what's on view before you go if a specific drawing is the draw. The museum also holds the Batliner collection, a strong run of Monet, Picasso, and German Expressionism that gives the Albertina a second, very different identity alongside the historic drawings. The state rooms upstairs, still decorated as Habsburg apartments, are worth the extra few minutes even if you came only for the art on the walls.