Belvedere Palace: Art and History Tour with Art Historian Guide. Skip-the-Line Tickets Included

What is Vienna famous for? It is the capital of music, the birthplace of psychoanalysis and the repository of the imperial heritage. In the galleries of Belvedere Palace you will find works that will help you discover all the facets of this city and its specific Austrian identity. The genius loci, or "spirit of the place", is inherent in every work of art, through the artist's will and often in spite of it. This tour gives you the opportunity to look at the most important works of Viennese painters and sculptors and to understand the Austrian mentality through them. I will help you to set up such a perspective, so that you will see that many things in art are not coincidental.

Looking at Gustav Klimt's The Kiss and Judith will help you understand why it was in Vienna that female sexuality became the focus of medicine. While Egon Schiele's Girl and Death and The Embrace will explain how the city became the birthplace of psychoanalysis. Paintings by Ferdinand Waldmüller will demonstrate the Austrians' tendency to turn even tragedy into a well-marketed image. And even the very Baroque decoration of the Belvedere Palace, with its abundance of ancient heroic scenes and portraits of military leaders, will give an idea of the distinctive pride that imbues the Viennese aura. The splendour of medieval altarpieces and the masterpieces of Klimt, the glimmers of intellectual life in the gloomy works of Schiele and Kokoschka - what makes this palace's collection shine? Let's explore the key paintings together and gain an insight into the multiple facets of this country and city.