As many of you know (assuming none of you had class today), today was Austria’s national holiday, more specifically was its independence day. The traffic for part of the city was blocked for the parade and many people came out despite the gloomy weather to enjoy having this day off and to join the celebratory atmosphere. In addition, many of them enjoyed free entries to a number of museums across the city…

One of my classmates actually told me about the day of free musum entries yesterday. She emailed me a list of museums with free entries and with discounted entries. The list included applied art museum, architecture museum, military history museum obviously, and the national library. For it was a holiday, I appropriately started my day rather lazily, giving myself just enough time to go to one maybe two museums.

First, I decided to go to Prunksaal of Nationalbibliothek. Prunksaal is the central structure of the national museum and is beautifully decorated with Baroque style. The room was built in 1723, and since then, Prunksaal had been expanding its collection, reaching the number as many as 200,000. Obviously, the room does not hold the purpose of library anymore, but the room itself is now a museum. In honor of the 100th annivarsary of Austria’s last emperor’s death, Prunksaal also had pictures of him and other documents to commemorate him.

Normally, the ticket for Prunksaal costs about 11 euros, and they do not have any student discount available. The decor of the room and its significance was breathtaking, but I am happier it was free.