Leopold Museum

The Leopold Museum exists because of one obsessive collector. Rudolf Leopold, an ophthalmologist, began buying the work of Egon Schiele in the 1950s, when the young Expressionist was still undervalued, and over five decades he and his wife Elisabeth assembled one of the most important collections of Austrian art of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 1994 the collection was transferred to a foundation, and in 2001 the museum opened in its purpose-built white shell-limestone cube in the courtyard of the MuseumsQuartier. Today it holds the largest Schiele collection in the world: anguished self-portraits, contorted nudes, tender and unsettling portraits, and luminous townscapes of the small Bohemian town of Krumau, a side of Schiele that surprises many visitors. Gustav Klimt is represented by major works, above all Death and Life, his great late allegory, alongside landscapes and drawings. Around them, the museum tells the wider story of Vienna around 1900: Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka, Koloman Moser and the artists of the Vienna Secession, and the furniture, glass, silver and graphic design of the Wiener Werkstaette, presented so that you see painting, architecture and everyday objects as one movement. The permanent presentation of Vienna 1900 is the core, supplemented by changing exhibitions that explore individual artists or themes. The building itself is calm and well lit, with large windows on the upper floors that frame the Hofburg and the Ring across the road. If the Belvedere's Klimt collection is about the golden icon, the Leopold is about the restless, searching modernism of the generation that followed, and the two together give you the complete picture.

How to visit: the museum is at Museumsplatz 1, inside the MuseumsQuartier, with Museumsquartier and Volkstheater U-Bahn stations at the doors. It is closed on Tuesdays, so plan around that. Buy a timed ticket online to skip the ticket desk, which can be busy on weekends and during major exhibitions. Allow about two hours: an hour and a half for the Vienna 1900 presentation and the Schiele rooms, and more if a special exhibition appeals. Lockers and cloakroom are available, and the building is fully accessible by lift.

Getting the most from it: start with the Vienna 1900 presentation to set the scene, then spend unhurried time with Schiele; his works on paper are often hung in rotation, so even repeat visitors find something new. Look for Klimt's Death and Life and the comparisons the curators draw between Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka. Do not skip the design rooms, where chairs, cutlery and jewellery by Moser and Josef Hoffmann show how the Secession wanted art to shape daily life. The museum cafe has a terrace on the MQ courtyard, a pleasant spot to sit afterwards among the colourful Enzi loungers.

Who it suits and how to combine it: art lovers first, especially anyone who left the Belvedere wanting more Schiele; couples looking for a rewarding museum afternoon; and history fans interested in Vienna as the laboratory of modern culture, where Freud, Mahler and Klimt were contemporaries. Combination tickets pair the Leopold with the Belvedere, the Albertina or the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which sits directly across the Ring. Spend the rest of the afternoon in the MuseumsQuartier, then wander up to the Spittelberg lanes behind it for dinner. One honest caveat: Schiele's frank nudes and self-portraits can be confronting, and the museum handles them seriously rather than sensationally, so it is worth reading the wall texts on his life, his brief imprisonment in 1912 and his death in the influenza epidemic of 1918 at just twenty-eight. Knowing how young he was, and how fast he worked, changes the way the rooms feel.