Once used as the Habsburgs' imperial apartments for guests, the Albertina is now a repository of more than one million drawings and prints, making it one of the world’s largest collections of graphic art. The permanent Batliner Collection of modernist art, with more than 500 works covering the period from Monet to Picasso, and the high quality of changing exhibitions make the Albertina highly worthwhile. Its most famed work is the 1502 watercolour Young Hare by Albrecht Dürer.
Multilingual audio guides cover all exhibition sections and tell the story behind the apartments and the works on display.
French impressionism and post-impressionism, as well as the works of the Swiss Alberto Giacometti, were the original focus of the Batliner Collection, but over time husband and wife benefactors Herbert and Rita Batliner added a substantial number of Russian avant-garde works to create a who’s who of 20th-century and contemporary art: Monet, Picasso, Degas, Cézanne, Klimt, Matisse, Chagall, Nolde, Jawlensky and many more.
Tickets (but not the audio guides) are valid for the whole day, so you can nip out for lunch and return later to finish off a visit.
A branch of the Österreichisches Filmmuseum is located here.
