Another Country

On Monday I took a trip to another country... Slovakia or officially the Slovak Republic.  This little country peacefully broke away from Czechoslovakia in 1993.  The capital city of Bratislava is just an hour by train from Vienna and is a popular day excursion from the Austrina capital.  So that is what I did.  I took an early train and arrived around 8:30 in the morning.

The city is on the banks of the Danube River.  The modern bridge crossing the river was the pride of the Communist government that built it in the 1970s.

It is often referred to as the UFO because of the spaceship-like structure at the top which contains a restaurant and an observation deck.

Since it was still early I decided to climb the hill to the Bratislava Castle for a view of the city.

The castle was begun in the 10th century and was the seat of the Hungarian Kingdom. (Hungary is just a few miles down the river from here, and in medieval times the borders of countries were quite fluid.)  After the region came under the control of he Hapsburgs, a Renaissance style castle was built.  When Maria Theresa of Austria promised the Hungarian nobles that she would spend more time in Bratislava, she had the interior redone in Baroque style.  The castle is now a museum.

Looking down from the castle you can see newly constructed apartments and office towers on the horizon, and in the foreground the red roofs and cathedral spire of the Old Town.

The Cathedral of Bratislava of course cannot begin to compare with the magnificent cathedral of Vienna, but it is a nice Gothic church.

Under the Communist rule the Old Town was left to decay while boring apartment blocks were built on the outskirts.  Now the Old Town is being restored, and between river cruise passengers and day trippers from Vienna, the area is invaded by tourists.

The town square is picturesque with its old city hall.

St. Michael's Gate is the only part of the medieval fortifications remaining, and it is the oldest structure in the city.

Other than that there is not a lot to see.  You can wander the streets of the Old Town, but frankly the principal streets are like a Slovak Disneyland.  Almost all of the people on the street are tourists, and most of the businesses are either restaurants, bars, or souvenir shops.  And most of the signs are in English.

Frankly, I was not much impressed with Bratislava.  Of course, after spending time in the grand city of Vienna, I suppose that it was bound to be a letdown.  Well, at least I can add another country to the list of places that I have visited.

Supper at City Hall

After my long visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum on Sunday I headed over to the Rathaus or City Hall.  The building looks medieval, but in fact it was constructed in the 1870s in a Neo-Gothic style.

Repair work is under way on the city hall's central spire, and it is covered with scaffolding.

In front of the city hall there is a large screen for the summer film festival.  Each night in July and August a different film is shown.  The majority of them are films of concerts, ballets, or operas.

But I was not here for the film (at least not that night).  I came to eat.  In addition to the summer film festival, there is also a food fair in the plaza in front of the city hall.  Dozens of Vienna restaurants set up food stands each summer.  There is quite a variety of cuisines represented.

(I wasn't about to try an Austrian version of Mexican food!)

And, yes, there were stands that sold traditional Austrian fare.  That is what I went with.

I ordered baked Emmenthal cheese.  It was served with a remoulade sauce and, surprisingly, cranberry sauce.  It was quite good, and the accompanying cucumber salad and potato salad were tasty too.

A World Class Museum

Even though I am now in Munich, I still have more to share with you about Vienna.

My home town of Cleveland is recognized for having an excellent art museum, so it takes a first rate museum to impress me.  The Kunsthistorisches Museum, which I visited on Sunday, most definitely impressed me.  The long German word means that it is a museum of art and history.  It was opened in 1871 during the reign of Emperor Franz Josef as a place to store the enormous archaeological, decorative arts, and painting collections of the Hapsburg family.

The majestic building is located across the street from the Hofburg Palace complex on a plaza named after Empress Maria Theresa.  Facing the museum on the opposite side of the plaza is a twin building which houses the Natural History Museum.

The interior of the museum is truly palatial.

On the ground floor in one wing of the building is the "history" part of the museum, an impressive archaeological collection beginning with ancient Egypt

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When Emperor Franz Josef went to Egypt for the opening of the Suez Canal, he was presented with several pillars from an ancient temple.  Those pillars were utilized in the construction of the museum and actually support the ceiling.

Room after room is filled with antiquities from ancient Greece and Rome.

The other wing of the ground floor is filled with the enormous Hapsburg collection of decorative arts.

Especially interesting were the automatons that were used as table decorations to entertain dinner guests.  This gilded ship, when turned on, would travel up and down the table and its little canons would shoot puffs of smoke.

Can you guess what this lovely piece of wood carving is?

It's a backgammon board!

The most famous piece in the decorative arts collection is this gold salt cellar created by Benvenuto Cellini, the famous Renaissance goldsmith and sculptor.

It is the only piece of Cellini's goldsmithing known with certainty to have survived to the present day.

All of this this would have constituted an excellent museum, but I still had to go to the upper floor where the painting collection is located.  There is a superb collection of Old Masters.  As you pass through room after room it is a thrill to come upon paintings that you recognize from pictures in books.

There are a large number of works by Rubens including quite a few large-scale canvasses.

I have always liked the paintings of the Dutch painter Jan Vermeer, but I have only seen pictures of his art.  Here I was face to face with one of his most famous works, "The Art of Painting".

There is a room full of Rembrandts including several of his self portraits.

The museum has one of the best collections of paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, the 16th century Flemish artist who is famous for his depictions of peasant life.

After Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church in order to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon, the Hapsburgs did not have good relations with England.  After all, Catherine was the aunt of the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.  So I was a bit surprised to find a couple paintings by Henry's court painter, Hans Holbein.  One of them is a portrait of Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour.

Here is Caravaggio's painting "David with the Head of Goliath".

There are several paintings by the Spanish master Diego Velázquez.  He was the court painter of King Phillip IV, one of the Spanish Hapsburgs.  Just as we send photos of the family to out of town relatives, Phillip sent Velázquez portraits to his Austrian cousins.

Portrait of Phillip IV of Spain

If you are familiar with the work of Velázquez, you recognize this little princess.  She is Phillip´s daughter Margarita, the girl in the painter´s masterpiece "Las Meninas" (which hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid.)  When she was only 15 years old Margarita was wed to her uncle and cousin, Austrian Emperor Leopold I.  She died at the age of 21.

Usually I try to limit my museum visits to two hours.  But here, even though museum fatigue was setting in, I spent over four hours.  I had to try to see as much as I could in this outstanding museum.

Palaces, Gardens and Art

On Saturday I visited the Hofburg, the winter palace of the Hapsburg rulers.  The huge complex grew and grew through the centuries into a maze of buildings and courtyards. Today it includes numerous museums, the National Library, the Spanish Riding School where the Lipizzaner stallions perform, and government offices.

The central portion of the palace features a large dome over an archway.

Monumental statuary adorns the exterior.

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You pass through the arch and under the dome...

… and from there into a palace courtyard with a statue of Emperor Franz II.

That courtyard leads out to another wing known as the New Palace.  Here are the National Library and four lesser museums.

In a courtyard in an older part of the palace are the Hofburg Treasury and the Imperial Music Chapel.

One walkway passes the courtyard where the stables of the Spanish Riding School are located.  There you can get a glimpse of the Lipizzaner stallions.

You could probably spend most of a week just seeing everything there is to see in the Hofburg.  The ticket that I had purchased prior to my departure included entrance to three attractions: the porcelain and silver collection, a museum dedicated to Empress Elizabeth, the wife of Franz Josef, and the Imperial Apartments.

In the first section, with case after case of chinaware, silver and gold gilt table decorations that belonged to the Hapsburgs, photography was allowed. 

That gave me hope that photography would also be allowed in the other two attractions on my ticket.  But no such luck.

The Sisi Museum (Sisi was the nickname of Empress Elizabeth) portrays the life of the beautiful but eccentric and unhappy wife of Franz Josef.  At the age of 60 her life was cut short when she was stabbed to death by an assassin.  She has become a legend, You will see her image on all sorts of knick-knacks in every souvenir shop in the city.

In the Imperial Apartments you see the living quarters of Franz Josef and Sisi.  Here is a picture I found on the internet of Franz Josef's office.  Although he was an autocrat and an arch-conservative, he took his position seriously and considered himself the servant of his people.  He got up at 3:00 A.M. daily and worked all day in his office.

From the Hofburg I took the tram to another palace... Belvedere Palace.   It was the home of Prince Eugene of Savoy, a French nobleman who offered his service to the Hapsburg Emperor when Austria was threatened by the advance of the Ottoman Turks.  When Eugene defeated the Turks in 1683, he became the hero of Austria. 

He amassed great wealth from his conquests and was able to build a palace to rival the Hapsburgs.  In fact, he built two palaces, the Lower Belvedere to live in, and the Upper Belvedere for entertaining.  In between the two was an enormous garden. 

The Upper Belvedere Palace

Looking across the gardens to the Lower Palace, and the skyline of Vienna beyond.

Notice the spire of St. Stephen's Cathedral in the distance.

Views of the gardens

Both palaces are museums today, but it is the Upper Palace that draws the most tourists.  It is today an art gallery, although the Marble Hall and the Chapel attest to the opulence of Prince Eugene's home.

The art collection here draws heavily on Austrian artists, but there are numerous pieces by well-known painters from outside Austria.

 Monet

Van Gogh

I was surprised to see this famous painting of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David.  I would have assumed that it is in the Louvre.  I later did a bit of research on the painting.  David did five versions of this portrait... however, none of them are in the Louvre.

The star of the show is the collection of paintings by Austria's most famous artist, Gustav Klimt.  The Belvedere has the best known of his works, "The Kiss".