Vienna Secession

The Secession was built in six months in 1898 as an exhibition hall for Vienna's breakaway artists. The city council rejected an earlier Ringstrasse site and approved this one only as a temporary pavilion for ten years. More than a century later, the same artist-run association still uses it for contemporary exhibitions.

The white walls and gilded leaf dome stand apart from the Gothic, Greek, and Renaissance buildings around the Ring. Joseph Maria Olbrich used flat walls and simple geometry instead of another historical facade. The permanent work inside is Klimt's 1902 Beethoven Frieze. Everything else changes with the exhibition calendar.