Money Museum of the Austrian National Bank

The Oesterreichische Nationalbank Money Museum is housed in the main building of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank on Otto-Wagner-Platz in Vienna- Alsergrund.With its displays, Austria’s sole money museum exposes the topics of money, currencies, and the economy.

The museum contains a large monetary history collection of over 200,000 pieces that is continually being added to.After the coin cabinets of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Grazer Landesmuseum Joanneum, it has one of the greatest numismatic collections in Austria.Objects linked to the history of Austrian paper money, such as banknotes, printing plates, sketches, and drafts, provide the collection’s focal point.The majority of these assets were kept in various divisions of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank during the bank’s almost 200-year existence and were gathered together in one collection at the end of the 1990s.Banknote designs by Peter Fendi, Gustav Klimt, Franz Matsch, and Kolo Moser, as well as two National Bank shares owned by Ludwig van Beethoven, are among the highlights of this section of the collection.Archival sources on the company’s history, on the other hand, are held in the Bank History Archive, which is not part of the Money Museum.

Aside from the paper money collections, the coin collection, which includes about 30,000 pieces and has been amassed since the late 1950s, is the second largest sub-area.The collection here, too, focuses on Austrian monetary history, however coins and other forms of payment (cowrie shells, for example) from all over the world can be discovered.A Bronze Age button sickle (tool money) and a Lydian 1/3 stater of King Alyattes II are among the earliest pieces.Special numismatic rarities include Duke Leopold III’s Judenburg gold gulden (1365-1386), of which only one has survived, and various Salzburg coins.Above all, one of Leonhard von Keutschach’s rare turnip thalers and one of only five known lion thalers by Hieronymus Colloredo.Some monetary history findings, as well as the Leypold collection (regional Roman coins) on permanent loan to the Vienna Coin Cabinet, round out the range.