The Natural Art History Museum or the Kunsthitorisches Museum in Vienna is packed full of gaudy golden goodies. Really, so much of it. They love their gold and they are obsessed with ornamentation. AND CHERUBS. 

Golden eggs

A golden platter inlayed with mother of pearl

A golden Pasha on his golden horse (getting the idea?)

Gold Gold Gold. We passed through room after room of other treasures; drinking vessels carved out of amethyst, and other precious stones, most decorated with golden filigree. There were seemingly endless rooms full of little sculptures of bronze, stone, ivory and… gold. I could only imagine the countless man hours that went into the making of all of these trinkets and precious objects. I would chuckle whenever we entered YET ANOTHER room full of monotonous golden objects. It was kind of exhausting.

Automiton with arrow-shooting finale.

However I really enjoyed the room full of automata, which are self-operating machines, often clocks, depicting battle ships, and scenes where the eye balls and body parts of the figures move back and forth, a cannon is shot off, or a horse cart moves etc. at the turn of a key or the insertion of a metal ball. There are rooms of greek pottery, rooms of a million carved stone heads, room after room of giant oil paintings of nudes, warriors, and old-time oligarchy.

Egyptian pillar holding up the room

My favorite part of the exhibition was the Egyptian section. Actually, thank god for the Egyptian section, because my eyeballs were glazing over from looking at so much ornamented gold. In the rooms of ancient Egypt they had installed at least three giant carved-stone pillars from an Egyptian temple. the ceilings were beautifully painted with colorful patters and birds, wings spread. Even the doors were in the Egyptian style, giant, carved of stone and painted with bright colors. 

And now… I leave you with a painting of wrinkly bottomed cherubs, because Vienna is obsessed with those too. They are all over building, paintings and sculptures here and are often slaying some kind of poor beast or creature. Enjoy!