The annual study tour organised by the Department of Art and Art History in the Faculty of Arts this year focused on the art, architecture and design in the city of Vienna. Held between the 17 and 21 March 2025, this trip, which is an integral part of the course of study, was a golden opportunity for the thirty-eight registered students who were able to get close and engage directly with extraordinary masterpieces.
Accompanied by Head of Department, and , the students – a mix of undergrads and postgrads in both History of Art and Fine Arts – visited the city’s most important art and decorative arts collections and directly engaged with masterpieces from the Late Middle Ages to the Contemporary, across museums, churches, iconic architectural spaces and exhibitions.
The students with Dr Mark Sagona
The tour kicked off on Monday morning at the heart of the city with a visit to St Stephen’s cathedral and its DOM Museum, discussing its architecture, paintings, sculptures, monuments and liturgical artefacts. This was followed by a walking tour of the main highlights of the city focusing on issues of urbanisation, transformation of space, design and architecture, concentrating upon an array of Baroque, Neoclassical, Revivalist and Modern buildings. A special focus of the first day was the cenotaph to Duchess Maria Christina at the Augustinerkirche, one of the major masterpieces of the great Antonio Canova.
The students with Prof. Conrad Thake
In the following days, the group toured and discussed special highlights from major museums, including the Kunsthistorisches, the Albertina, the Upper Belvedere, the Leopold and the MAK, the latter being the first museum to be established on the newly-built Ringstrasse in the 1870s.
The students with Dr Christian Attard
These close encounters provided students with unique moments of observation, study, discussion and creative engagement with masterpieces by such artistic giants like Leonardo, Raphael, Cellini, Dürer, Breugel, Caravaggio, Giordano, Preti, Messerschmidt, David, Canova, Klimt, Schiele, Kirchner, Nolde, Wagner, Moser, Olbrich and Hoffmann, among several others. This was excellent preparation for the paper which students have to present as part of the study-unit assessment.
Special moments during the study tour included the visit to von Ferstel’s Gothic Revival Votivkirche – which is led by long-serving Maltese priest Joseph Farrugia and who took the group around the newly-restored church and its new museum. Rev. Farrugia was presented with a copy of Prof Thake’s edited volume on the Addolorata Cemetery. Another remarkable moment was the private tour of the extensive collections of decorative arts at the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) by curator Dr Rainald Franz, a special friend of the Department, who was presented with a copy of the two decorative arts books recently published by Dr Sagona.
Finally, the group also visited Fischer von Erlach’s iconic eighteenth-century Karlskirche, where students also experienced the panoramic view from the church’s roof.
The lecturers leading the study tour also paid a courtesy visit to H.E. Natasha Meli Daudey, Maltese Ambassador to the Austrian Republic at the Maltese Embassy in Vienna and discussed possible future collaborations. H.E. Meli Daudey was presented with Dr Attard’s recent book on Antoine Camilleri.
The Department’s annual study tour presented a unique opportunity for students to deepen their understanding of art, architecture and design within their international context. The Vienna tour provided another crucial experience in the direct engagement with works of art and the experience of architectural spaces, and should be seen as an extension of the regular discussions held in class at the University of Malta.
