The Coin Cabinet is located on the second floor of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Featuring over 600,000 items, it is one of the largest and most important coin collections in the world. The exhibition features high-quality exhibits set amidst impressive historical furnishings.
Insights into the exhibition
Coins and medals are part of our history. The stories they tell have captivated people for centuries.
Address
Coin Cabinet, 2. Stock
Maria-Theresien-Platz, 1010 Vienna
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Opening times
Tue - Sun, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Thu until 9 pm
Tickets
Adults €23
Reduced admission €19
Kids / Teens under 19 free
On average, visitors spend around 0.5 hours in the Coin Cabinet.
Room I offers an overview of the history and evolution of medals from their beginnings in Italy around 1400 to the 20th century. Austrian and European decorations of honour can also be seen here. In Room II the focus is on the history of coins and banknotes, from pre-monetary forms of currency and payments in kind to the invention of coins dating from the seventh century B.C. to the present day. Room III is reserved for special exhibitions. Also worthy of note is the famous portrait collection of the Tyrolean sovereign Archduke Ferdinand II (r. 1564–1595), which is on display in the Coin Cabinet rooms.
The Coin Cabinet is permanently located on the second floor.
Vermeyens Kartons für den monumentalen Tapisserien-Zyklus des Kriegszugs Kaiser Karls V. gegen Tunis bilden den größten Bestand an Tapisserien-Vorlagen der niederländischen Renaissance weltweit.
Die Kartons für dieses bedeutendste, umfangreichste und teuerste Prestigeprojekt im Dienste der Propaganda Kaiser Karls V. bilden sowohl aus künstlerischer, kulturhistorischer als auch historiografischer Perspektive ein einzigartiges Werk von aller höchstem Rang.
The Coin Collection, with approximately 600,000 objects spanning three millennia, ranks among the five largest coin collections in the world and offers a comprehensive display of medals, coins, paper money, decorations, and minting tools.
The Vienna Coin Cabinet arose out of the Habsburg collection and was continually developed and expanded.
Interest in old coins goes back a long way. For the rulers, discoveries of valuable treasures that included coins made of precious metals were a welcome addition to gold and silver. The pieces were either melted down to extract the metal or incorporated into the imperial treasure store. Some of the later art collections sprang from this source. Coin collections are among the oldest museum exhibits worldwide. This was the case for the Vienna Coin Cabinet – it arose out of the Habsburg collection, which was continually developed and expanded.
Habsburg-Tirol: Erzherzog Ferdinand II., 1568, Inv. Nr. MK 2486bβ
The oldest inventory that we still have today was created in 1547/50 under the rule of Ferdinand I (1503–1564). In it, imperial chamberlain Leopold Heyperger recorded almost exclusively Roman coins.
Archduke Ferdinand II (1529–1595), the emperor’s son and sovereign ruler of Tyrol, was an enthusiastic collector of objets d’art and possessed a coin collection. His coin display cases still exist today and can be found in the Vienna Coin Cabinet and in Ambras Castle.
Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612), who turned his Prague residence, his seat of royal power, into a centre of cultural life, likewise added to the inventory of the Habsburg coin collection and proved himself a particular supporter of the art of medal-making.
It wasn’t until a hundred years after the death of Rudolf II, however, that the imperial Coin Cabinet awoke from its century-long slumber. In 1712, Emperor Charles VI (1685–1740) appointed Swedish scholar Carl Gustav Heraeus Inspector of Medals and Antiquities. Heraeus was to create a spatially unified imperial cabinet by merging the Ferdinand Collection kept in the court library, the treasury of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in the Stallburg and the coin collection at Ambras Castle.
Emperor Franz I Stephan von Lothringen (1708–1765), the consort of Maria Theresa (1717–1780), introduced a new aspect to imperial coin collecting. He focused his attention on what were then modern coinages. 1748 was a milestone year in the history of the Viennese coin collection. Franz I Stephan von Lothringen decided to amalgamate the Numophylacium Carolino-Austriacum and the Numophylacium imperatoris Francisci I. When this took place, the stock count revealed a total of nearly 50,000 items, including 21,000 ancient coins.
In 1774, the secularised Jesuit priest Joseph Hilarius Eckhel was appointed director of the Coin Cabinet and its antiquities, which was to become vitally important for all numismatists interested in ancient coins. His system of categorising coins according to geographic and chronological criteria, known as the ‘Eckhelsche Ordnung,’ is still in use today. In addition, Eckhel’s ten-volume Doctrina nummorum veterum achieved worldwide fame and admiration for the imperial cabinet for the first time.
Emperor Francis I (Francis Stephen, Duke of Lorraine) (1708−1765), 1776/1777, Inv. Nr. GG 6389
During the 19th century, findings in other historical disciplines were to transform the field of numismatics. Purely descriptive numismatics was linked to an interest in the history of money, which led to increased collecting. Today, in addition to coins and medals, the Coin Cabinet contains paper money and paper securities, payments in kind, tax stamps, tokens and tickets, seals and seal stamps, coin scales and weights, orders, medals of honour, and historical coin and medal minting stamps. Hence, the Coin Cabinet has become a place for collecting documents that represent money in all its forms and functions.
Upon the opening of the newly established Kunsthistorisches Museum on Vienna’s Ring Road in 1891, the various imperial collections – which until then had been housed in various buildings – were finally brought together in one place. The ‘Cabinet of Coins and Antiquities’ was initially kept in rooms on the first floor before being moved to the second floor in 1899. Since 1900, the Coin Cabinet has existed separately from the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities as a collection in its own right.
Die Eröffnung des Kunsthistorischen Museums durch Kaiser Franz Joseph..., 1891, Inv. Nr. GG 5990
The Coin Cabinet is not only one of the largest coin collections in the world, but also a research institute in the true sense of the word.
Find out more about the scientific work of the Coin Cabinet.
Our exhibitions take you back to the rich history of our museum. Here, proven masterpieces meet newly explored themes - a look at art, culture and the past that continuously illuminates the collection.
