Secession Building

In 1896, Gustav Klimt and a number of other artists quit the conservative Kunstlerhaus and founded a new art association called the Secession. The building of the same name was completed in 1898. On the site made available by the city administration on Wienzeile near Naschmarkt, Joseph Maria Olbrich constructed a modern, Art Nouveau style exhibition building for the association in 1897/98, which remains one of the best-known buildings in Vienna to this day. The leafwork dome ("golden cabbage") is the symbol of the Secession and visible from afar. At the time, the architecture caused a big fuss among the population. The original site on the corner of Ringstrasse/Wollzeile had to be abandoned following a flood of protests.