Secession Building

Listen for a moment. Behind you, trams grind and chime along the edge of Karlsplatz. Ahead, a white block of a building sits almost silent. Then you look up and see the gold. A dome of metal leaves catches even a grey Viennese sky, and in sunlight it glows like something alive. You are standing in front of the Secession Building, and it was designed to make people stop exactly where you are standing now.

To understand why it looks so strange, picture Vienna in the 1890s. This was the capital of an old empire. The city's official art world was controlled by an established artists' association, which favoured grand historical paintings and polished academic styles. Many younger artists felt shut out. In 1897, a group of them broke away. They called themselves the Secession, meaning a separation or a withdrawal. Their first president was the painter Gustav Klimt.

The rebels needed somewhere to show their work, so they built their own home. The young architect Joseph Maria Olbrich designed it, and the building opened in 1898. Olbrich was a student of Otto Wagner, the architect who shaped much of modern Vienna. Wagner's own station pavilions stand a short walk away on Karlsplatz. It is worth noticing how quickly the whole project moved. Within roughly a year of breaking away, the artists had a permanent exhibition hall of their own.

Now look at the shape of the building itself. The lower part is almost severe — smooth white walls, clean edges, very little of the heavy ornament you see on the grand avenues nearby. It feels closer to an ancient temple than to a nineteenth-century palace. That contrast was deliberate. The Secession artists believed a building should be honest about its purpose. This one was made for showing art, and its plain walls frame the decoration instead of drowning in it.

Above the entrance, find the words in gold lettering. In German they read: Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit. In English, that is: To every age its art, to art its freedom. The line is usually credited to the critic Ludwig Hevesi, a strong supporter of the movement. It works as a manifesto in nine words. Every generation deserves art that speaks for its own moment, and artists must be free to make it.

Look just above and around the doorway, and you will see three faces. These are Gorgon heads, figures from Greek myth. Here they are usually read as symbols of the three arts the Secession brought together — painting, sculpture and architecture. Their snakes and staring eyes give the entrance an odd, slightly theatrical mood. Walk a little along the side walls too. Owls appear in the decoration there. In the classical world, the owl was linked to wisdom.

Then there is the dome. It is not a solid dome at all, but an open globe of gilded bronze laurel leaves, with small berries among them. In ancient Greece and Rome, laurel crowned victors and poets, so the meaning is clear: this is a wreath for art itself. Viennese people were not always impressed. Locals gave it a teasing nickname — the golden cabbage. Other mocking names circulated as well. Today the cabbage is one of the city's best-loved sights.

Here is something many visitors miss. The building has been rebuilt and repaired more than once. It was badly damaged near the end of the Second World War, and the dome needed serious work in the decades after. The gold you see now is the result of careful restoration. When you look up, you are looking at an original design, kept alive by later craftsmen who copied and repaired it.

Inside, the most famous work is downstairs. The Beethoven Frieze was painted by Klimt for an exhibition in 1902 dedicated to the composer Ludwig van Beethoven. At the centre of that show stood a large Beethoven sculpture by the German artist Max Klinger. Klimt's frieze ran high along three walls of a side room. It tells a loose story inspired by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. A suffering humanity longs for happiness, faces hostile forces, and finally finds joy through art.

The second surprise is that the frieze was never meant to survive. Like the rest of that exhibition, it was planned as a temporary decoration, painted onto the walls themselves. After the show, it was removed in sections and kept, passing through private hands. The Austrian state later acquired it, and after long restoration it returned to the building in the 1980s. It now sits in its own basement room. If you visit, look for the golden armoured knight, the gorilla-like monster, and the embracing couple at the end.

It is easy to treat this place as a museum of the past, but that would miss its point. The Secession is still run by an association of artists, and the main hall still hosts changing exhibitions of contemporary art. Some shows may feel puzzling or provocative. That is very much in the spirit of 1898. The artists who built this hall wanted to unsettle comfortable taste, and their successors continue to do so under the same golden dome.

Before you leave, step to the side of the building. You will find a large bronze sculpture of the Roman general Mark Antony in a chariot pulled by lions. It was created by Arthur Strasser and has stood beside the Secession for well over a century. From here, you are only a few minutes from the Naschmarkt, Vienna's long open-air market. You can follow the smells of spices and coffee to its stalls.

Take one last look as you go. Notice how the white walls change colour as the light moves — cool and almost blue in shade, warm in late afternoon sun. Notice the gold leaves trembling slightly against the sky. Behind you, the trams still ring and the traffic still pushes past. For a moment, though, you have stood where a group of young artists declared their freedom... and the building they made still holds that declaration above its door.