Albertina (Vienna)

The Albertina is a museum in the Innere Stadt (First District) of Vienna, Austria. It houses one of the largest and most important graphic arts collections in the world with approximately 65,000 designs and approximately 1 million pressure graphic sheets.

History

Vienna's Albertina was erected on one of the last remaining section of the fortifications of Vienna, the Augustian Bastion. Originally, the Hofbauamt (Court Construction Office), which had been built in the second half of the 17th century, stood in that location. In 1745, it was refurbished by the director of the Hofbauamt, Emanuel Teles Count Silva-Tarouca , to become his palace. The building was later taken over by Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen . He used it as his residence and later brought his collection there from Brussels, where he had acted as the governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. For that purpose, he had the building extended by Louis Montoyer . Since then, the palace has immediately bordered the Hofburg . The collection was expanded by Albert's successors.

The collection of paintings was created by Duke Albert in the 1770s in the Castle of Bratislava, where he resided as the governor of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1765 to 1781. In the 1820s, his heir Archduke Charles initiated further modifications of the building by Joseph Kornhäusel , which affected mostly the interior decoration. After Archduke Charles, Archduke Albert and Archduke Frederick lived in the building.

In early 1919, the building and the collection passed from the Habsburgs into the ownership of the Republic of Austria. In 1920, the collection of pressure graphics was unified with the collection of the former imperial court library. The name Albertina was established in 1921 In March 1945, the Albertina was heavily damaged by bomb attacks. The Albertina was completely refurbished and modernized from 1998 to 2003.

External links

• Albertina homepage