Visit Vienna’s Globe Museum & National Library…
TRAVEL, Austria — Culturally Vienna, like Paris, is one of those cities you must visit for artistic and cultural depth.
Of course, many European cities have great museums and art galleries and hidden treasures.
Vienna has a secret museum though. Well secret in the sense few people visit it as tourists. If you are arts-minded though you will enjoy it. …
One of the signs of a cultural important city is their importance in global culture and affairs.
Few cities have had as much impact on modern arts & design as Vienna and Paris. Paris is well known, and I have already written about the city many times here.
Vienna’s Global impact
Vienna had Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Wagner and the Secession. This has had a massive impact on global design. Prior to that Biedermeier, Historicism and Vienna’s central position in the courts of Europe aided Vienna’s long-term cultural impact.
Adolf Loos, architect; Sigmund Freud, psycho-analyst; Amadeus Mozart, musician and Ludwig Von Mises, economist may all be from diverse fields and backgrounds.
But all men have had a significant impact on global culture, extending into recent history and beyond. Such impact was cradled and built in Vienna.
Most people who visit Vienna find the common cultural museums in the tourist guides: MAK, KHM, Belvedere, Hofburg and the Wien Museum. But there are many.
The most overlooked of these is a small museum, Vienna’s Globe Museum.
The Power of World Globes as a historical tool of knowledge
Prior to more modern technologies, globes were a way of mapping the world. And to a lesser known extent, the heavens.
Celestial globes were the night-sky mapped onto a globe, and are among the most beautiful.
Globes were produced by traditional centres of learning such as Prague, Leipzig, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Venice, Amsterdam and of course Vienna. Many are from the states that later formed Germany.
Globes could be used in calculations and as scientific devices for measurement if produced accurately. They could also be beautiful pictorial devices.
Possession of a globe, always handmade, was a sign of curiosity and often learning. Often also, wealth as few could afford them until mass-production.
About the Globe Museum, Vienna.
The Globe Museum is administered by Austrian National Library, one of the most magnificent libraries in the world. It is the major and I believe only public globe museum in the world.
A little walk away, and down past the Hofburg Palace, where the tourists gather is the Globe Museum. A beautiful florist and the famous coffee-house, Cafe Centrale are not far away either.
My Personal Experience
I have been to Vienna 7 or 8 times now.
The Globe Museum is well worth a look, and if you have an artistic interest for something unusual, spend a while, and buy one of the small books from the gift shop.
Globes are a beautiful artwork to view.
Remember, if we don’t study our past, we may not create a better future…
Take care,
Christopher
Speaker. Author. Editor-In-Chief. Executive Director of Innovation, 2thinknow.
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