Secession

The Secession in Vienna opens with the mockery its gilded dome of laurel leaves drew when it went up in 1898, giving the building its nickname, the golden cabbage. The guide follows the rebel artists led by Gustav Klimt who built it, backed by industrialist Karl Wittgenstein, and their motto carved above the door: to every age its art, to every art its freedom. It also traces Klimt's Beethoven Frieze, painted downstairs four years later and meant to last only six weeks.