Heeresgeschichtliches Museum

Rising from the brick barracks and workshops of Vienna's Arsenal, the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum looks less like a military museum than a Byzantine palace: a long façade of striped red and yellow brick, terracotta ornament and crenellated corner towers, gathered around a central block crowned by a dome. Inside, beneath painted vaults, lies one of the great collections of military history in Europe, telling the story of the Habsburg monarchy and of Austria through its armies, from the wars of the sixteenth century to the end of the Second World War. Its most famous exhibit is a small open touring car whose passengers changed the course of the twentieth century.

The building was designed by the Danish architect Theophil Hansen as part of the vast Arsenal that the young Emperor Franz Joseph raised after the revolution of 1848, a fortified military complex meant to secure the throne against the restless capital. Built between 1850 and 1856, it is the oldest purpose-built museum building in Vienna. Hansen took the Venetian Arsenal as his starting point and blended Byzantine, Gothic and Moorish motifs in what became a key monument of Viennese historicism. The interior is a hall of fame in stone and paint: the entrance hall is lined with dozens of life-size marble statues of Austrian commanders, the staircase was painted by Carl Rahl and his pupils, and the domed hall of fame upstairs carries frescoes by Karl von Blaas of the army's great victories. First opened as an imperial arms museum in 1869 and refounded as the Imperial Army Museum in 1891, the institution was badly damaged by bombing in 1944, rebuilt after the war and reopened under its present name in 1955.

The displays range from armour, banners and Ottoman trophies captured around the siege of Vienna in 1683 to the giant fifteenth-century wrought-iron bombard known as the Pumhart von Steyr, ship models from the Austro-Hungarian navy and a park of tanks outside. The heart of the museum for many visitors is the Sarajevo room, where the Gräf & Stift car in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were shot on 28 June 1914 stands beside the archduke's bloodstained uniform, the shots that set off the First World War made suddenly tangible. Vienna itself, imperial capital of the Habsburgs for centuries and now the capital of Austria, is famous for its palaces, music and coffee houses; this museum shows the military power that underpinned that splendour.

Getting there

The museum stands in the Arsenal in Landstraße, Vienna's 3rd district, about 2 km south-east of the historic centre. Wien Hauptbahnhof, the city's main railway station with long-distance trains across Central Europe, is a short walk away. Vienna International Airport (VIE) lies about 16 km to the south-east and is linked to the main station by rail.