Albertina, Vienna

Albertina is an art museum housed in Palais Erzherzog Albrecht, a former Habsburg residence beside Vienna’s Hofburg. Its long façade belongs to a palace that Albert Casimir, Duke of Teschen, received in 1794, and he adapted it for his collection of prints and drawings. The museum’s name honours Albert Casimir von Sachsen-Teschen, who began the collection in 1776.

What makes this place remarkable is the scale and character of that collection: it includes about 65,000 drawings and about 1 million old master prints, alongside photographs, architectural drawings, and more recent graphic art. Among its celebrated works are Michelangelo’s male nudes, Dürer’s Field Hare, and children’s portraits by Rubens. The holdings now cover art from the Gothic period to the present, while the Batliner collection provides a permanent modern-art display titled Monet to Picasso.

Much of the material is kept in a fully automated high-bay store, an unseen archive containing more than 1 million artworks. The Albertina also has further sites: Albertina Modern presents art from modernism to the present, and Albertina Klosterneuburg focuses on art created after 1945.