Central Europe Trip, Days Nine & Ten

While day eight was the day of palaces, day nine was a day of museums. After breakfast, we headed to the Belvedere.

In 1714 the Austrian general Prince Eugene of Savoy commissioned the architect Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt to build the Lower Belvedere. The palace was completed just two years later in 1716. Today, the former living quarters and staterooms of this Baroque summer residence are still an impressive sight. Attractions include the Marble Hall, adorned with frescos by Martino Altomonte (1659-1745), the state bedroom, Hall of Grotesques and the Marble Gallery.


The Lower Belvedere also incorporates the orangery and palace stables, formerly used for the prince's horses.




Paul and some of the students decided to stop at the Freud Museum during a free period.

This house in the Alsergrund district, at Berggasse 19, was newly built when Freud moved here in 1891. In 1938 Freud was forced to leave German-annexed Austria due to his Jewish ancestry, and fled to London. His old rooms, where he lived for 47 years and produced the majority of his writings, now house a documentary centre to his life and works. The influence of psychoanalysis on art and society is displayed through a program of special exhibitions and a modern art collection.

The museum consists of Freud's former practice and a part of his old private quarters. Attached to the museum are Europe's largest psychoanalytic research library with 35,000 volumes and the research institute of the Sigmund Freud Foundation.
The display includes original items owned by Freud, the practice's waiting room, and parts of Freud's extensive antique collection. However his famous couch is now in the Freud Museum in London, along with most of the original furnishings, as Freud was able to take his furniture with him when he emigrated.


For the majority of the afternoon, we toured the grand Kunsthistorisches Museum. It was opened in 1891 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.







The two Ringstraße 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. The inside of the building is lavishly decorated with marble, stucco ornamentations, gold-leaf, and paintings. I thoroughly enjoyed the Pieter Brueghel collection. I could look at these paintings for hours and still find new insights and intricacies.



The students finally talked Mr. Plank into Planking in the Museum courtyard.

Following an early dinner, we slept for a few hours and headed out for day ten...to the airport in the wee hours to catch our long flight home. We had bonded with Nadia and snuck a picture at the last minute. She was an amazing guide and really inspired me to want to travel more and learn as much as I can about Europe and beyond...perhaps a little French might be in my future!

It was an amazing, unforgettable trip. I hope to share many of these places with Wyatt someday.