Moments from Belvedere Palace

Prince Eugene of Savoy, the military commander who spent much of his career defending Vienna from Ottoman advance, commissioned this Baroque palace complex from architect Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt in the early eighteenth century as a summer residence grand enough to match his status as one of the most powerful men in Europe who wasn't actually royalty. The Upper Belvedere, the larger of the two palace buildings, now houses the world's largest collection of Gustav Klimt's work, including The Kiss, a painting so heavily reproduced on posters and mugs that seeing the real thing, with its actual gold leaf catching real light, tends to catch even jaded visitors off guard.

Go to the Upper Belvedere for Klimt and the broader Austrian modernist collection, including Schiele and Kokoschka, and consider the Lower Belvedere separately, it runs its own rotating special exhibitions rather than housing the permanent collection. The formal gardens connecting the two buildings, laid out with fountains and sphinx statues on a slope overlooking the city, are free to walk and give you the classic postcard view of Vienna's skyline that most visitors photograph without realizing it's the palace's own front lawn.