Upper Belvedere: The Kiss and the State Treaty

Why is it significant?

In front of you the Upper Belvedere rises like a stage set: roofs that seem to ripple like a row of tents, a pond that doubles the whole facade in its water, and white stone glowing in the sun. Hildebrandt finished it for Prince Eugene in 1723, not to live in but to impress.

Key Facts

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In front of you the Upper Belvedere rises like a stage set: roofs that seem to ripple like a row of tents, a pond that doubles the whole facade in its water, and white stone glowing in the sun. Hildebrandt finished it for Prince Eugene in 1723, not to live in but to impress.

Inside hangs the most famous painting in Austria. Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, painted in 1907 and 1908, shows a couple wrapped in a single golden cloak, kneeling at the edge of a meadow of flowers. His robe is covered in black and white rectangles, hers in round blossoms, and real gold leaf glows on the canvas. The Austrian state bought it in 1908, almost as soon as it was exhibited, which is why it never left Vienna. The Belvedere now holds the largest collection of Klimt paintings in the world, alongside Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and a version of David's Napoleon crossing the Alps.

Not every painting stayed. Klimt's golden portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, seized from her Jewish family after 1938, hung here for decades. In 2006, after a long legal fight, an arbitration court ruled that it belonged to her heirs, and it left for New York. The museum now researches the history of its collection, and that story is part of Vienna's art history too.

Then go up to the Marble Hall. On the 15th of May 1955, the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France signed the State Treaty here with Austria's foreign minister Leopold Figl. The occupation that had begun in 1945 would end, and Austria would be free and neutral. Figl stepped onto the balcony and held up the signed treaty to the crowd waiting in this garden, and the people below cheered.

So the same rooms hold Klimt's lovers and a nation's freedom. Before you go, turn round on the terrace and look back down the garden towards the city. For the last stop, leave by the south gate and walk down through the small Schweizergarten park to a glass pavilion that once stood in Brussels.