The Kunsthistorisches Museum opened in 1891 as a purpose-built home for what the Habsburgs had spent four centuries collecting — which is why a single Vienna museum holds the world's largest Bruegel collection, Vermeer's The Art of Painting, Raphael's Madonna of the Meadow, Velázquez's infanta portraits and Benvenuto Cellini's golden Saliera salt cellar. It faces its architectural twin, the Natural History Museum, across Maria-Theresien-Platz, the two domed blocks built as a matched pair on the Ringstrasse.
The Picture Gallery upstairs is the headline: Room X gathers twelve Bruegels, including Hunters in the Snow and The Tower of Babel, a density no other museum approaches. One floor below, the Kunstkammer — the imperial chamber of wonders — runs to 2,200 objects of automata, ivory carvings and goldsmith work, with the Saliera (once stolen in 2003, recovered in 2006) as its centerpiece. The Egyptian and Near Eastern collection and the Greek and Roman antiquities fill the other ground-floor wings; the building's marble staircase, with Klimt's early spandrel paintings above the arcades, is a work in its own right.
Entry is about €21 (under-19s free), open 10:00–18:00 with Thursdays until 21:00; the museum closes Mondays outside high summer, so check the day. Two focused hours cover the Picture Gallery and Kunstkammer; completists need four or more. The café under the dome, in the octagonal cupola hall, serves Thursday dinner slots that book out — an easier plan is coffee there mid-afternoon between collection wings.
