All activities / Museums & Galleries / Vaduz
Museums & Galleries in Vaduz
The capital of Liechtenstein, a small riverside town on the Rhine below the hilltop Vaduz Castle, home to the principality's cluster of national museums, the Prince's art collection and the pedestrian Stadtle where the country's cultural institutions sit within a few minutes' walk.
Why here
For a country of forty thousand people, Vaduz packs a remarkable museum mile into a few hundred metres of the pedestrian Stadtle. The anchor is the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, the national museum of modern and contemporary art, a black basalt and tinted-concrete cube opened in 2000, joined in 2015 by the Hilti Art Foundation building next door with its older masters. A short walk away the Liechtenstein National Museum tells the story of the principality itself, from prehistory and the Roman Rhine to the reigning House of Liechtenstein, across a restored historic inn and two adjoining buildings. Between them sit the postage stamp museum and the treasury with princely treasures and Faberge, so a single afternoon on foot covers art, national history and the oddities of the world's sixth smallest state.
Best months
The museums cluster on and around the Stadtle in central Vaduz and are open year round, most closed on Mondays. The Kunstmuseum and National Museum each want an hour or two; combined tickets and the wider museum mile make a half or full day. Everything is walkable and indoors, so this works in any weather and pairs well with the castle viewpoint above town.
Getting there & around
Vaduz has no railway station; the nearest trains stop at Sargans or Buchs in Switzerland and at Feldkirch in Austria, with connecting buses into town, and the Liechtenstein bus network links all municipalities. The museums sit within a few minutes' walk of each other on the central Stadtle, which is pedestrianised, so park once at the edge of town or arrive by bus and cover them on foot.
Skill levels: beginner
Schools & guides (2)
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
OrganizerThe Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein is the principality's national museum of modern and contemporary art, opened in November 2000 in a landmark cube of black basalt and tinted concrete on the Stadtle in Vaduz. In 2015 it was joined by the adjoining Hilti Art Foundation building, which shows classic modern works from that private collection. The museum holds the national art collection and runs a changing programme of international contemporary exhibitions alongside the state holdings.
Liechtenstein National Museum
OrganizerThe Liechtenstein National Museum, the Landesmuseum, is the principality's museum of national history, first established in 1890 and today spread across a restored historic inn and two adjoining buildings on the Stadtle in Vaduz. Its permanent exhibition runs from prehistory and the Roman Rhine Valley through to the reigning House of Liechtenstein, with a treasury of princely treasures and a separate postage stamp museum, the central national collection of the country's history and culture.