Albertina Museum

The Albertina is the museum that surprises people who thought Vienna was all about Klimt. It occupies the former city palace of Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen, son-in-law of Maria Theresa, who began collecting drawings and prints in the eighteenth century and built what is now one of the largest and most important graphic collections anywhere, running to around a million works on paper, from Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael to Rembrandt, Rubens, Schiele and Klimt. The most famous single piece is Albrecht Durer's watercolour of a young hare, painted in 1502, which is so fragile that the original is shown only rarely; most of the time you see the drawing in reproduction while the real one rests in the dark. That is the key thing to understand about the Albertina: works on paper cannot be on permanent show, so the museum works through a constant programme of changing exhibitions, many of them among the most ambitious in Central Europe. Alongside them sit two permanent attractions. The Habsburg State Rooms on the main floor, restored to their early nineteenth-century Classicist splendour, are some of the finest palace interiors in the city, all silk walls, gilded furniture and parquet, and they are far calmer than the Hofburg apartments a few steps away. The permanent collection galleries, built around the Batliner collection, take you from French Impressionism through Monet, Degas, Cezanne and Matisse to Picasso, Chagall and modern Austrian painting, which makes the Albertina the place in Vienna to see the modern masters that the Belvedere and the Kunsthistorisches Museum do not cover. Outside, Hans Hollein's dramatic floating roof blade marks the entrance on the raised Albertinaplatz terrace, which also gives one of the best close-up views of the State Opera. The museum also runs two outposts, Albertina Modern in the Kuenstlerhaus at Karlsplatz and Albertina Klosterneuburg north of the city, both focused on art since 1945.

How to plan your visit: check what is on before you go, because the temporary exhibitions are the heart of the Albertina and they change several times a year, from old-master drawings to major names of twentieth-century and contemporary art. Book a timed ticket online in busy periods, especially weekends and the weeks around a blockbuster opening, and use the late openings on some evenings for a calmer visit. Allow two hours: about forty minutes for the State Rooms, an hour for the Monet to Picasso galleries and whatever time the current exhibition demands. Lifts make the whole building accessible, and the cloakroom and lockers are free.

Getting the most from it: start in the State Rooms while you are fresh, as they are the part most visitors rush, and look for the views from the windows over the Burggarten and the Opera. Then do the permanent collection in order, which works as a compact history of modern painting in a few rooms, and finish with the special exhibition. If Durer's hare is part of a show during your visit, treat it as a rare event; otherwise enjoy the excellent study displays of how the collection is conserved. The terrace outside is free and worth a few minutes in any case, and the museum shop is one of the best for art books in Vienna.

Who it suits and what to pair it with: art lovers who have seen the Klimts at the Belvedere and want the wider European story; first-time visitors who want one museum in the very centre that combines palace interiors with modern art; and couples looking for a beautiful rainy-day plan. The Albertina sits between the State Opera, the Hofburg and the Kaerntner Strasse shopping street, so it fits naturally into a day around the Ring. Pair it with the Imperial Crypt a few minutes away, a coffee at a classic cafe nearby and an evening at the Opera across the square.