Explore
Belvedere Palace

Belvedere Palace

Vienna City Guide
Palace · Landstraße (3rd)AustriaVienna,Austria

Two Baroque palaces at either end of a terraced Vienna garden, built for Prince Eugene of Savoy, the upper one now holding Klimt's Kiss.

The Belvedere is two Baroque palaces at either end of a garden that steps down a slope, and the arrangement exists for the view. From the upper palace the garden falls away and the city sits at the bottom of it, with sphinxes, cascades and clipped hedges doing the work in between. Each terrace opens a different view rather than simply decorating the ground. The palaces went up in the 1710s and 20s for Prince Eugene of Savoy, a Habsburg commander. Since 1923 the Upper Belvedere has held the national collection, and one room in it draws most of the traffic. The Kiss is a square canvas, 180 centimetres on each side, worked in oil with gold, silver and platinum leaf. In person that gold is not flat: it is tooled, scratched and raised so that it moves as you do. Around it hang more Klimt than exists anywhere else, along with Schiele, Kokoschka and the Austrian nineteenth century. The same rooms hold Judith of 1901, in a metal frame made by Klimt's brother Georg to his design, its title punched into the top.

Worth knowing

Good to know

  • The Kiss room is busy from opening to closing — the first slot after the doors open is the only window when the painting is not photographed over shoulders.
  • The entrance-hall giants are a repair — the Sala Terrena's ground was giving way, so in 1732 four Atlas figures went in to carry a new vault; the Baroque swagger is structural.
  • The garden is free, the palaces are not — the terraced park between them opens at half past six in summer, hours before either palace lets a visitor in.
  • Two palaces at opposite ends of one garden — the Upper holds the Klimt and the nineteenth century, the Lower keeps its Baroque state rooms, and it is a good ten minutes on foot between them.

Things to do

  1. 1

    Come up through the garden

    Come up through the garden

    Enter at the lower palace and walk up. The cascades, the sphinxes and the hedges are arranged to reveal the upper palace gradually, and at the top you turn round and get the whole city under the parterre. If you come in by the upper gate you get the view straight away and miss that slow build-up.

  2. 2

    Give The Kiss five minutes from two distances

    Give The Kiss five minutes from two distances

    Stand a step from the canvas first, then walk back to the far wall and look again. Near, the ornament is all there is; far, the two figures pull free of it and the embrace reads as an embrace. Five minutes covers both.

Watch

More in Vienna

Hofburg
Hofburg Palace · Innere Stadt (1st)
Secession Building
Secession Building Museum · Innere Stadt (1st)
St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom)
St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom) Church · Innere Stadt (1st)
Schönbrunn Palace & Gardens
Schönbrunn Palace & Gardens Palace · Hietzing (13th)
Grinzing and the Nussberg vineyards
Grinzing and the Nussberg vineyards Neighborhood · Döbling (19th)
Imperial Crypt (Kaisergruft)
Imperial Crypt (Kaisergruft) Historic · Innere Stadt (1st)
Imperial Treasury (Kaiserliche Schatzkammer)
Imperial Treasury (Kaiserliche Schatzkammer) Museum · Innere Stadt (1st)
Prater & the Giant Ferris Wheel
Prater & the Giant Ferris Wheel Landmark · Leopoldstadt (2nd)
Vienna State Opera
Vienna State Opera Palace · Innere Stadt (1st)
Kunsthistorisches Museum
Kunsthistorisches Museum Museum · Innere Stadt (1st)
Leopold Museum
Leopold Museum Museum · Neubau (7th)
Judenplatz and the Nameless Library
Judenplatz and the Nameless Library Historic · Innere Stadt (1st)
Jouvida Places worth discovering
AtlasCitiesExperiencesBriefingAtlas indexProfileAbout JouvidaGet the app
PrivacyCookiesTermsLegal noticePhoto creditsSupport
© 2026 Jouvida
/