Burgtheater
National theater with a Ringstrasse facade and grand staircases painted by a young Gustav Klimt.
Location
About this audio guide
Above the grand staircase of Vienna's national theater on the Ringstrasse, a young Gustav Klimt painted himself into a crowd scene at Shakespeare's Globe — the only self-portrait he ever made. The guide follows Klimt, his brother Ernst, and their friend Franz Matsch decorating the new Burgtheater's stairwells in the 1880s with scenes spanning theater history, a decade before The Kiss made Klimt famous. It also traces the building through 1945, when American bombs and fire gutted the auditorium below. Look up as you climb the stairs.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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