Vienna Golden Age Architecture Tour

Notice: The 1900 Exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts will be closed from May 23rd 2025 to February 24th 2026. During this period, your expert will replace the exhibition with a visit to the Beethoven Frieze at the Secession Building.

As the 1800s slipped away and a new century dawned, Viennese artists like Gustav Klimt and Otto Wagner envisioned a new aesthetic that broke with the past—naming their movement the Vienna Secession. During this 3-hour, immersive Vienna architecture tour with a local historian or architect, we'll explore Art Nouveau and the birth of Modernism through the eyes of the creatives who made it happen.

We'll begin our trip back in time to Vienna’s Belle Epoque with a visit to the Museum of Decorative Arts, which boasts a fantastic collection of early 20th-century furniture and design, including Gustav Klimt's preparatory drawings for one of his most famous paintings. Here, we'll discuss the social and economic context of Vienna in the first decade of the century, when industrial progress and global trade began unraveling the Austrian monarchical system. During our visit to the museum, we'll also encounter the work of architect Josef Hoffman and the Wiener Werkstätte, an artists’ collective focused on decorative arts.

Our tour will lean heavily on architecture to help us visualize the radical effects of the Vienna Secession, visiting some of the most important buildings from this period. Otto Wagner left a permanent mark on the city with masterworks like the Vienna post office, as well as his subway entrances that rival the work of French Art Nouveau masters. We'll also take a ride on the subway, itself a product of this period and very reflective of the new emphasis on technology and functionalism.

Depending on time and interest, we may also include a visit to the Secession House, a major work of Jugendstil architecture that features Klimt's “Beethoven Frieze.” Originally conceived as an exhibition hall, this space allows us to consider the exchange of ideas between the avant-garde in various cities across Europe as the continent teetered on the edge of World War I. At the end of our time together, we'll have a deeper understanding of the history of Vienna’s 20th-century artistic revolutionaries and the climate in which they created some of their greatest works of art and architecture.

(Looking for a general overview of Vienna? Try our Vienna Walking Tour. Looking to explore a different era of history? We suggest our  Schönbrunn Palace Tour).