A Masterpiece Remade

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The allied bombs that hit Vienna's Albertina Palace in March 1945 destroyed nine magnificent neoclassical staterooms and reduced stretches of richly decorated façade to rubble. The museum's priceless art collection — including masterpieces by Michelangelo and Rembrandt — had been moved by the Nazis to safe storage in salt mines near Salzburg, and survived unharmed. But the former Habsburg residence became a long-term casualty of war. Postwar refurbishment, from 1948-52, was a cash-strapped compromise of gray concrete exteriors; the grand entrance was replaced by a door at the side of the building. Visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of the palace's former beauty found badly lit salons displaying cleverly executed facsimiles of such celebrated works as Albrecht Dürer's Praying Hands.

Exactly 58 years after the bombs fell and nine years since it closed for a €100 million makeover, the Albertina opened last month to reveal a stunning symbiosis of traditional and modern architecture: glorious, handcrafted staterooms inspired by palaces such as Versailles and Laeken, alongside cool, high-tech spaces that bring to mind London's Tate Modern. For director Klaus Albrecht Schröder, this juxtaposition of old and new is the Albertina's unique selling point. "You move from one world to another. From a beautiful late-18th century palace to a thoroughly modern 21st century museum," he says.

After a 1992 fire destroyed the Redoutensaal in the nearby Hofburg Palace, the Albertina's management realized they needed a safe place to store the museum's irreplaceable collection. As a result, a 3,000-sq-m state-of-the-art storage area reclaimed from underneath the bastion — a part of the old city fortifications on which the palace stands — will house the artworks under carefully controlled environmental conditions. When completed, a computerized system will be able to locate and retrieve any of the more than 1.5 million items within 60 seconds. Another impressive feature is a four-story study wing housing restoration workshops and a library. Designed by the Austrian architects Erich Steinmayr and Friedrich Mascher so that it is concealed within the expanse of palace buildings, it leaves Vienna's skyline unchanged.

The art collection of the palace's second owner, Duke Albert of Saxony-Teschen, was already famous in his own lifetime, 1738-1822. Albert's grandson, Archduke Albrecht, allowed the public to view the collection in the family residence as early as 1873, but exhibition space was always limited. Now some 1,000 sq m of gallery space has been created underground, within the bastion. A second 1,000-sq-m exhibition area was created out of former storage rooms and a section of the adjacent Augustinian monastery. The most lasting impression is made by the newly renovated imperial rooms of the Albertina Palace. It cost j5 million and took an army of 60 experts to clean and restore the 14 staterooms now on view to the public. Says Christian Benedik, the art historian responsible for the renovations: "We wanted the rooms to look just as they did in 1822, and that was expensive, and difficult, because there are only a few craftsmen and -women who are familiar with the different techniques. But it was marvelous to see them come to life."

Designed by Josef Kornhäusel in the 1820s according to an elaborate French classicist style unique to Central Europe, the rooms feature jewel-colored silk wall coverings specially made by the prestigious Venetian textile manufacturer Lorenzo Rubelli from original patterns found in the state archives in Budapest; intarsia floors by Joseph Danhauser incorporating eight different kinds of wood; charming Angelika Kaufmann medallions released from decades of dust and grime; and, everywhere, sparkling chandeliers copied from the originals where necessary by the Austrian crystal specialist Swarovski. In the Gold Cabinet, the smallest of the staterooms, gilders used a special "Albertina" mix of 23-carat gold plus one-carat silver and copper to renew the extravagant wall paneling to its original sheen, while the Hall of the Muses, a former Habsburg ballroom, has breathtaking newly restored sculptures of Apollo and the Nine Muses.

Some of Europe's most acclaimed architects and designers took part in the Albertina reconstruction. To use the palace's original main entrance atop the bastion, 11 m above street level, Austrian Hans Hollein's design incorporated an elevator and escalator to carry an expected 500,000 visitors annually to the top, and a huge titanium wing-shaped roof projecting from behind the famous equestrian statue of Archduke Albrecht out over the street below. Although not yet in place, the wing will provide a visual link between the two levels as well as a bold, easily identifiable symbol of the union of old and new that defines the museum. The museum's shop, a chic, spacious room with black stained cherrywood furniture, gray leather seating and a two-color marble (travertine and rosso levanto) floor, was designed by Briton Callum Lumsden, while its elegant café-restaurant — with a terrace overlooking the leafy Burggarten — was the work of Austrian Arkan Zeytinoglu.

Although Schröder says he is most moved by the combination of richness and simplicity of the staterooms, he adds that Duke Albert was above all a great collector of contemporary artists — a tradition followed by subsequent heads of the Albertina. "We are a living museum, which is why we are staging very modern exhibitions of contemporary art," he says. Appropriately, the opening of the new Albertina is marked by a major retrospective of the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch. Entitled "Theme and Variation," it features such masterpieces as The Scream and Madonna. Simultaneously, works from the museum's newly created photographic collection are also on display, plus an exhibition of the work of American artist Robert Longo, whose very Viennese subject is the apartment of Sigmund Freud. Due to the extreme light sensitivity of the artworks, there will be no permanent exhibition of the museum's treasures. However, one of its most famous pieces, Dürer's 1502 watercolor Hare, will be shown for the first time in decades in a fall exhibition of that artist's work. Visitors should grab the chance to see the original: in future the only facsimiles to be found will be in the museum shop.