After lunch, we set off on a tram for the Belvedere.
The Belvedere consists of two magnificent palaces, the Upper and Lower Belvedere, which were built in the 18th century in Baroque style as the summer residence for Prince Eugene of Savoy. The palaces and their extensive gardens are considered to be one of the Vienna's finest Baroque landmarks.
The Upper Belvedere originally had a representative function so apparently many momentous public events took place here. Later it served as an imperial painting gallery, and it is still a picture gallery today.
This is a view from the upstairs of the Upper Belvedere across the magnificent gardens to the Lower Belvedere.
As you can see, it also gives a good view over Vienna.
Some parts of the building have been preserved in their original state. You are not allowed to photograph the paintings, but nobody stopped me from photographing the ceiling of this circular room.
Here you can see the typical rococo interior, white paint with gold leaf adorned decorations in high relief and chandeliers dripping in crystals to reflect the light. Mind you, the decorations are not in such high relief as those of the Schönbrunn Palace we saw yesterday, nor are the chandeliers so enormous but this is the general idea.
The Upper Belvedere houses a collection of Austrian art dating from the Middle Ages to the present day, including the world’s largest Gustav Klimt collection. Sadly, the section on the Middle Ages is currently closed.
The highlights of all the collections are Klimt’s golden pictures Kiss and Judith, though there are also masterpieces by Schiele and Kokoschka, neither of which we particularly like. So we looked at them, but we preferred to concentrate on things we liked.
Everybody wants to see and photograph Kiss, but of course you are not allowed to photograph it, so there is a reproduction downstairs which you can photograph instead.
We were the only tourists in the building not taking a selfie with it, as far as I can gather, so we had to form an orderly queue.
The room with the most famous Klimt paintings has a guard in it all the time, and he spends his time running about preventing naughty tourists like me from taking photos, so we have been obliged to buy some reproductions.
However, some of the other rooms are not so closely guarded, so I snatched a quick photo of this one by Klimt, which I really like.
I also managed another photo of a second one, Avenue to Schloss Kammer, which I liked even more, but such was my haste the photo is really squint, I didn't have time to line the camera up properly.
I also couldn't resist the picture below, by an artist I've never heard of.
This is called, sensibly enough, Pond, and was painted in 1900 by an artist called Wilhelm Bernatzik.
There are prominent works by many of the French Impressionists, including a Van Gogh, but I preferred this Monet
It's called Path in the Garden at Givernay and I would ideally have wanted to take it home with me - but I don't think the museum would have liked that!
There were several rooms full of paintings classed as Biedermeier, which covers the period between the Congress of Vienna in 1814 and around 1848. I am told that these paintings are characterized by their striving for a true-to-life representation of the visible world and so they are described as Biedermeier Realism. The most important artist of this period was Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, but I was beyond caring about art by then, my feet hurt and I was exhausted. I wanted to sit and rest in the museum café, but there wasn't one, so I found an armchair to rest while Paul browsed the shop. Then we caught the tram and then the U-bahn back to the hotel, where we had about an hour to rest and eat a quick sandwich before it was time to get ready for the concert at the Schönbrunn.
Concerts at the Schönbrunn are normally in the Orangerie, but we were told the Orangerie had already been booked, so this one would be in the Grand Gallery. We had really been looking forward to that, so we really didn't mind walking the considerable distance from the U-bahn to the Palace gates; when we finally got there, we were told that the concert had been moved back to the Orangerie after all. So we had to walk all the way back there, which was more or less opposite the exit from the U-Bahn! Normally I would have no problem in walking, but my knee was aching, as was the opposite hip because of the limping, and my feet and ankles had swollen up like balloons.
The concert was in two halves, extracts from three different Mozart works in the first half, then various things from the Strauss family in the second half. There were two singers, and two dancers. The singers sang bits from Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro, and a couple of Strauss pieces, the dancers danced a ballet minuet from Don Giovanni, and a polka and a waltz during the Strauss parts, both in ballet style and therefore not the sort of thing you might expect to dance yourself. The singers were reasonable, the baritone had a strong voice though the tone was sometimes a bit thin. The soprano had the most beautiful voice but it wasn't very strong so she was sometimes drowned out by the orchestra.
It was quite an enjoyable evening, but afterwards we did feel envious of one of our party who had decided to go to the Opera instead, something we never even thought of doing. No tickets were available, but he bought two from one of the ticket touts and, though he said the seats were quite poor ones, at least they had seats!
Anyway, at least we have listened to Mozart and Strauss played in the city where they worked,and next time we come to Vienna, we'll try booking for the Opera on-line well before we travel.
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