In 1897, nineteen artists walked out of , and a year later this building was already standing.
It was designed by , a student of the architect , and it was meant to be everything the official art palaces were not: white walls, a clean box, and on top a dome made of more than three thousand gilded laurel leaves. The Viennese were quick with their verdict and called that dome the golden cabbage, a nickname it has never managed to shake.
Above the entrance you can read the motto that sums up the whole movement: to every age its art, to art its freedom.
Down in the basement you still find the that painted in 1902 for a single exhibition. He put it straight onto the wall, because the work was supposed to be torn down afterwards, and the reason it is still here is that a collector had the walls sawn out.
A few hundred metres further north stands the academy where most of these artists had trained.
Sources. Story: Wien Geschichte Wiki, Stadt Wien; Secession Wien, documentation Beethoven Frieze Photos: Secession Building Vienna, C.Stadler/Bwag, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
