I'm out and about: Greeks and rejection from a library.

So today I went to the New Palaces at Hofburg.
I probably wouldn't have gone there if it hadn't been for my Art History assigment, for which I need a Greek, Roman, or Etruscan work of art. So I went to the only museum that said for sure it had them. Actually, the new palaces are home to 3 museums- Armor, Musical intruments, and the one I care about, Ephesus.
Ephesus was a Greek colony in present day Turkey, and if you go there, it's actually the best preserved greek-roman site in the mid-east. Anyway, it went from a Greek colony to a "Roman Metropolis", which means it was a pretty prominent Roman city. So there's all these ruins if you actually go there, but the museum here in Vienna houses a whole lot of the statues and jewlery and reliefs and all kinds of fun stuff like that found at the site. Mostly Roman.
The other cool thing about this museum is that it's in the Hofburg palace, and pretty much no one knows about it. So you get to walk through this incredibly beautiful palace all by yourself. It was awesome.
After walking through that museum, and kinda checking out the other two, which weren't nearly as cool, I left, and found the national library, which is in the same building. But they wouldn't let me in! Apparently, you have to go buy a library card, good for a day or a year, before you can get in, and you have to be at a certain point in your schooling and all sorts of things blah blah blah. I'm gonna try to get in some other day, needless to say. But the lady at the counter just told me I wasn't allowed in, and I watched everyone else be let it, it was soo sad!! If you know how much I love books, maybe you have an idea of how depressing it was to have to leave there.
And then I got home and discovered I was out of chocolate licorice! What a day.
Ok, I gotta go write a paper.

Cleaning the statue? Outside of the Natural History Museum.

The Art History Museum

Nemesis: Greek goddess of Retribution. This statue is only about 2 ft tall. I think it's good to know how tall they are, because from looking at this, there is no sense of scale.

Isn't this a beautiful grave stele? This theme of a woman relaxing and a slave bringing her something was very common. You can tell it's a slave because she's so small, and they show heirarchy with scale.

Part of the frieze from the Parthian Monument, meant to commemorate the Parthianian wars, which were won by Emperor Lucius Verus. This frieze is huge, easily 7-8 ft tall, so the people on it are larger than life.

The palace. Amazing. I couldn't get over how beautiful it was. EVERYTHING wasa marble, except the ceiling, and even that had real crytal things hanging from it, there were little rainbows everywhere on the floor from them.

One half of the Frieze.

I have no clue who the people on this relief are.

This is a whole bunch of emporers, I think Lucius is one of them, but the only one I remember is Hadrin, who's the one on the left I do believe. He was the first Spanish Emperor, and is the person responsible for building the Pantheon. (The temple in Rome with the hole in the middle)

The other half of the Frieze.

I don't know who these people are either, but can I just say first off that the museums here have horrible lighting, just awful, and I'm not just being a snotty lighting designer, can you see how some parts are bright and others are dark? Anyway, also in ancient times these reliefs would have been painted, but I love the color they are now, they're actually that amber color, and they sparkle in the light.

The sign for this relief said something about Apollo, which confused me because I thought it was a woman, but I guess not.

Battle scene?

Demter: goddess of the grain. I think...it's been a long time since I studied mythology.

Aphrodite and someone else.

Heilos? I think that has something to do with Apollo...but I couldn't read the sign and I don't remember.

Look, it's a real Greek column between the Classical-inspired columns! Crazy.

Too pretty.

It was almost worth the admission price just to see this palace. I don't really like palaces much, I'm more of a castle fan, but this was so amazing. Marble! Everywhere!

More of the relief.

This is from Pompeii. Pretty cool.

It was so hard to get a picture of this!! I finally gave up, but that brings me to a new point, that 90% of the things in this museum weren't in cases. They have guards that wander around to make sure you're not breaking things, but everything out in the open, without even velvet ropes to keep you a certain distance away. It was so cool to get to get up close, and look at different angles.

Some of the halls still had pictures up. To break up the marble I guess.

Marie Antoniette.

Another vase. You can tell it's from a later period because they can do the black on red, and red on black technique. Fancy!

This is from a series of Gigantic tapestries showing Austians battling Turks. The tapestries were beautiful though, they were so bright, and didn't look like material.

Maria Teresa. Sorry for the weird angle, it was the best I could do to reduce the glare.

Part of the musical intruments museum.

This is a child's armor, and they had a lot more of it. It was creepy.

Kybele? I don't know if that's a german word or if it's a goddess I've never heard of. This statue was only a foot tall.

Herakles battling a Centaur. Herakles because it's Greek, not Roman or Etruscan, although I think (again, that whole language barrier thing) it's actually a Roman copy. Most Greek statues are Roman copies. Anyway, how tall do you think this was? Because it was actually the base of a lamp and less than a foot tall.