Today's programme is dedicated to discovering the Vienna that, between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, became one of Europe's great cultural laboratories.
In the morning we set out for the Klimt Villa, the artist's residence and final studio. This unassuming house, almost withdrawn from the world, still preserves the intimate atmosphere in which Klimt spent his last years and gave shape to some of his final works. To walk through it is to glimpse not only his painting, but also the silence and concentration of one of the great masters of Viennese modernism.
We then move on to Otto Wagner's Villa in Hütteldorf, today enriched by the mural paintings of Ernst Fuchs. Wagner was instrumental in the transition from historicist Vienna to modern Vienna: his thinking opened the way to a new architecture: clear, functional and deeply attuned to the spirit of its time.
After these visits, we make our way to Schönbrunn Palace, the great summer residence of the Habsburgs. We tour its magnificent interiors, steeped in history, ceremony and court life, moving through the spaces where imperial power was staged for centuries. Lunch in the surroundings of the palace.
In the afternoon, the day's final visit: the Secession Building, with its unmistakable golden dome of laurel leaves, a symbol of the desire to break with academic art. Inside, we discover Klimt's celebrated Beethoven Frieze, a monumental work in which painting, music and symbolic thought merge into a unique experience. Here, more than almost anywhere else, the aspiration of an entire generation crystallises: to create a new, free and total art.
Return to the hotel. Free evening and dinner at leisure.