Tourist attractions in Vienna : Kunsthistorisches Museum

The Museum of Art History in its palatial building on Ringstraße, was opened at the same time as the Naturhistorisches Museum, by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary. The two museums have identical exteriors and face each other across Maria-Theresien-Platz. 

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Both buildings were built between 1872 and 1891 according to plans drawn up by Gottfried Semper and Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer. The two museums were commissioned by the Emperor in order to find a suitable shelter for the Habsburgs' formidable art collection and to make it accessible to the general public. The façade was built of sandstone. The building is rectangular in shape, and topped with a dome that is 60 meters high. 
 

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The interior of the building is lavishly decorated with marble, stucco ornamentation, gold-leaf, and paintings. Kunsthistorisches Museum consists of six different collections :

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The Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum developed from the art collections of the House of Habsburg. Among the other highlights in the Picture Gallery are its holdings of pictures by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which are unique worldwide, as well as masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Raphael, Caravaggio, Velázquez and Italian Baroque painters.

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The Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum contains more than 12,000 objects date from a period of almost four thousand years, from the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods (ca. 3500 BC) to the early Christian era. Among the highlights are numerous sarcophagi and coffins, animal mummies, grave stelae, divine figures, objects of daily life such as clothing and cosmetic articles, masterpieces of sculpture such as the Reserve Head from Giza, facial stelae from southern Arabia as well as a depiction of a lion from the Ischtar Gate in Babylon.

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The objects in the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities span a period of more than three millennia and range from Bronze Age ceramics of Cyprus dating from the 3rd millennium BC to early Medieval finds. Some 2500 objects are on permanent display. Among the other highlights of the collection are the larger-than life Votive Statue of a Man from Cyprus, the Amazonian Sarcophagus, the bronze tablet with the famous Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, the Theseus Mosaic from Salzburg and, not least, the Youth from the Magdalensberg, to name only a few.

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The Kunstkammer Wien ( Collection of Sculpture and Decorative Arts ) is the most important collection of its kind in the world. Individual collectors from the House of Habsburg, who generally commissioned works as well, played a decisive role in expanding the holdings. The Library of the Kunsthistorisches Museum is a reference library that comprises the libraries of the Museum’s different collections and departments, housing a total of around 256.000 volumes. The collection of historically important books numbers around 36.ooo titles. Its main focus is on incunabula, manuscripts, maps and historical prints relating to history, cultural history and art.

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The Coin Collection is one of the five largest and most important coin collections in the world. With some 700,000 objects from three millennia, it contains not only coins, but also paper money, medallions, orders, etc. Some 2,000 objects can be seen in the three halls housing the permanent display, which represents only a small part of the holdings.

Text Sources: wikipedia.org  and  khm.at