We visited Vienna’s Belvedere palace complex because we were on a mission–we’d promised my mother we’d go see Gustav Klimt‘s famous painting “The Kiss” while we were in Vienna.

And so we did.

Despite the threats posed by a day of dramatically changeable weather, we decided to walk from our hotel (the elegant Hotel Bristol, where we had a great view of the Opera Place from our room), a distance of over a mile. One the way we passed the photogenic St. Charles Church with its minarets reminiscent of Austria’s former enemy, the Turks.

We also passed the Russian war memorial, which expresses gratitude to the Russian army for liberating Austria from the Nazis. I found its large scale, grandiose, symmetrical formality so typical of totalitarian state design practices at odds with its poignancy, making the whole monument strangely moving. Perhaps the weather enhanced this effect.

The Belvedere is a beautiful arrangement of two buildings and their gardens, sloping down a gentle hill facing north. The Upper Belvedere is the grander of the two buildings.

Inside is a museum that contains a wonderful collection of Klimt paintings as well as works by many other artists. It was quite interesting seeing “The Kiss” in the context of Klimt’s historical progression as an artist–poised in a small number of years between his realism and his impressionism. I must add here that despite having seen (probably) hundreds of reproductions of “The Kiss” over the years, the original quite took my breath away. I always imagined “The Kiss” as a vertical work and not very large. In fact, it is a square painting almost six feet on a side. In other words, the figures in “The Kiss” are almost life size.

Beyond are the utterly gorgeous formal gardens sloping down toward the Lower Belvedere.

There are enticing views of the side gardens from within the Lower Belvedere.