The Secession Building is a plain white block under a dome of thousands of gilded iron laurel leaves, which Vienna mocked as the golden cabbage. Over the door runs the motto of the artists who built it: to every age its art, to art its freedom. They put it up in 1898 after walking out of the society that controlled every exhibition in the city. Gustav Klimt was their first president, Joseph Maria Olbrich designed the building at thirty, and the steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein paid for much of it.
Downstairs hangs the Beethoven Frieze, thirty-four metres of painted plaster Klimt made in 1902. Wide stretches are left bare, because it was meant to be seen once and then thrown away, and you meet it in a windowless basement room built to hold it. Bombs hit the building in 1945 and retreating German troops set it on fire, so the white hall above you is a rebuild. The artists' association still owns the place and hangs new work upstairs; between shows that hall is closed and the frieze is all there is.