Description of the attraction
The Historical Museum of the City of Vienna has existed since 1887. Until 1959, the museum was housed in the building of the Vienna City Hall. However, talks about creating a separate building for the museum have been going on since the beginning of the 20th century, many architects presented their plans, of which Otto Wagner's proposal was especially interesting. Historical events, specifically the two most difficult wars, made their own adjustments - the building of the museum was postponed for several decades.
In 1953, the Vienna City Council passed a resolution in honor of the 80th birthday of the president of the republic and former mayor of Vienna, Theodor Kerner, promising to turn the long-standing idea of building a museum into reality. A competition was organized in which 13 architects were invited to participate, such as Clemens Holzmeister, Erich Boltenstern and Karl Schwanzer. All interested participants were allowed to participate in the competition. The projects were evaluated by a jury headed by Chairman Franz Schuster and Director of the Architecture Department Franz Gluck. In total, 80 contestants took part in the competition and submitted a total of 96 projects. The contract for the design of the Art Nouveau building, as well as the design of the interior of the museum, was signed with Oswald Haertl, who, surprisingly, took only fourth place in the competition.
The museum was opened on April 23, 1959. In 1985, Robert Weissenberger presented the Dream and Reality exhibition, which was attended by over 600,000 people, making the exhibition one of the most successful in history in Vienna.
In 2003, under the leadership of Wolfgang Kos, several museums in Vienna were merged, and the Historical Museum was renamed Vienna Museum Karlsplatz.
In the museum you can see the works of Schiele, Kokoschka, Loos. On the first floor of the museum, there are stained glass windows from St. Stephen's Cathedral, which miraculously survived a fire in 1945, and on the second, among other exhibits, there are things from the times of the Turkish sieges, including flasks, a turban and an interesting Turkish plan of Vienna.
The museum has both a permanent exhibition and thematic exhibitions.
