Albertina Museum, Vienna

The Albertina Museum - a gorgeous gallery in the heart of Vienna, home to a rich permanent exhibition and always interesting temporary exhibitions. The Albertina Museum is another important landmark in Vienna, a museum that houses one of the oldest and largest halls dedicated to graphic art. The founding charter of the Albertina Museum as a gallery was issued on 4 July 1776. All of the exhibits of the Albertina Museum 's collection span the period from the late Gothic to the present. The Albertina Museum 's collection numbers over 65,000 drawings, more than a million prints, and also quite a few modern prints, photographs and architectural drawings. To the impressive number of exhibits at the Albertina Museum are added two truly significant collections of famous artists such as Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Albrecht Durer, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Cézanne. Due to the huge size of the collection and the effect of light on the works, which easily fade, only a small part of it is on display, with the works usually grouped in thematic exhibitions.

The Albertina Museum was originally a building erected as a wing of the Hofburg for Maria-Christina, the favourite daughter of Empress Maria Theresia and her husband Albert of Saxony, whose name the building bears. This magnificent residence is today an art gallery with one of the world's largest collections of etchings, prints and watercolours - nearly 1.5 million exhibits. Duke Albert laid the foundation for the collection of prints in the 1770s in his residence, the Royal Castle in Bratislava, which he used while he was governor of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1765 to 1781. The Albertina Museum closed its doors to visitors between 1996 and 2003 as its reconstruction was underway at the time.