
Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary opened the facility around 1891 concurrently the Natural History Museum, Vienna which has a similar design and is instantly across Maria-Theresien-Platz. The two buildings were constructed between 1871 and 1891 according to plans by Gottfried Semper and Baron Karl von Hasenauer. The emperor commissioned the two Ringstraße museums to create an appropriate residence for the Habsburgs’ formidable art collection and to make it accessible to most of the people. The buildings are rectangular, with symmetrical Renaissance Revival façades of sandstone lined with massive arched home windows on the main levels and topped with an …




