Plan your visit to Belvedere Palace

Plan your visit to Belvedere Palace (Schloss Belvedere) starts here, ahead of any trip to the Baroque complex that the military commander Prince Eugene of Savoy raised in Vienna's 3rd district. The sections below cover opening hours, house rules, and the highlights of the Upper and Lower Belvedere.

Belvedere Palace is not a single building but three separate ones in Vienna's 3rd district. The Upper Belvedere stands at Prinz-Eugen-Strasse 27, 1030 Vienna, the main gallery that holds Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" and the complex's most important art collection. The Lower Belvedere sits at Rennweg 6, 1030 Vienna, once Prince Eugene of Savoy's residential palace and now the setting for rotating special exhibitions and the Baroque state rooms. Belvedere 21, at Arsenalstrasse 1, 1030 Vienna, concentrates on contemporary art and lies apart from the main complex. The formal Baroque gardens link the Upper and Lower palaces across three terraces on a marked slope, with the Lower Belvedere at the bottom and the Upper Belvedere crowning the hilltop.

"The Kiss" (Der Kuss), the gold-leaf painting Gustav Klimt completed in 1908, hangs on the first floor of the Upper Belvedere inside the gallery devoted to Vienna around 1900. The 180 by 180 centimetre canvas shows two lovers wrapped in patterned robes on a flowering meadow, their forms dissolving into a field of gold. Klimt borrowed the technique from Byzantine gold mosaics seen on his travels to Ravenna, and the work crowns the Golden Period that made him the defining figure of the Vienna Secession. The painting remains a symbol of Austrian cultural identity and the museum's most sought-after holding. Most visitors spend 15 to 20 minutes in this gallery, which grows crowded by late morning.

The Marble Hall (Marmorsaal), the ceremonial hall at the centre of the Upper Belvedere, rises through two storeys behind walls of reddish marble and gilded ornament. Carlo Carlone received the commission for its ceiling fresco in 1720 and painted it between 1721 and 1723, a swirling composition that celebrates the military victories of Prince Eugene of Savoy, and a quadratura technique makes the painted architecture seem to open into the sky. Officials signed the Austrian State Treaty in this hall on 15 May 1955, ending the postwar Allied occupation and restoring Austria as a sovereign, democratic state. Its tall windows frame a symmetrical view over the gardens toward Vienna. A pause of 10 to 15 minutes covers the hall.

The Belvedere Gardens, laid out by the architect and engineer Dominique Girard, connect the Upper and Lower palaces along a formal French Baroque design. Girard trained in the Versailles tradition, arranging the grounds as symmetrical parterres set with fountains, water cascades, and mythological sculptures. Three broad terraces step down the natural slope, so the walk between the palaces doubles as a viewing platform. From the upper terrace, the layout frames both palace facades and the Vienna skyline in a single sweep, a panorama many visitors rate as the highlight of the whole complex. A stroll through the gardens takes 30 to 45 minutes.

The Character Heads, a series of busts by the sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, rank among the strangest works in the Belvedere. Messerschmidt cast them in a tin-lead alloy or carved them in alabaster during the later 18th century, turning away from the smooth idealism of Neoclassicism to study human physiognomy and raw emotion. Each head fixes a single extreme state, from a wide yawn to clenched pain or forced laughter, pushing facial expression to the edge of caricature. Art historians read the series as a hinge toward realism and the psychological study of the face. Up close, the busts show precise anatomical detail and the marks of Messerschmidt's casting technique. Ten to fifteen minutes covers the display.