Secession

Klimt's Beethoven Frieze, thirty-four metres long, in the basement

A group of artists including Klimt resigned from the conservative Künstlerhaus in 1897 and built themselves an exhibition house with the motto "to every age its art, to art its freedom" carved over the door and a dome of gilded laurel leaves that the city nicknamed the golden cabbage.

Upstairs it still functions as it was intended, as a kunsthalle run by artists with a changing contemporary programme. Downstairs is the Beethoven Frieze, painted by Klimt in 1902 for a single exhibition and never meant to survive.