Upper Belvedere (Austrian Castle)

The Upper Belvedere of Vienna (built 1717-1723) is one of the most visitied buildings in Vienna, Austria, due to the gallery that includes Gustav’s Klimt world famous painting „The Kiss“. 

For the Austrian people it is also most important, because the Austrian State Treaty, that re-established Austria as a sovereign state, was signed here on May 15, 1955, among the Allied occupying powers (France, UK, USA, USSR) and the Austrian government. I’m not quite sure, wether the building would be landmark enough, but the original was owned by Prince Eugene of Savoy, an early real European man long before EU and Euro.

On choosing which Austrian building would be most appropriate to be turned  into the LEGO mould for an architecture set, I found out that this building would be the best to transform to a useful scale. It’a just 2 studs wider than Brandenburg Gate, but the short side is 2 studs shorter. Furthermore I think that it has a quite fine classical look and the more I look at it, the more I like it.

The color of the roof of the 4 towers on the edges should also be in sandgreen.

Apart from the door/balcony segment on the back, not much is snotted and therefore easy to build. There’s not a big varity of different bricks. The plates with clips are used to showcase the double-figurines that are featured heavily on the roof. It features also the new corner tiles (which I‘m very fond of) in the pavement (12 times). The bricks are in 5 different colors, with only one part in gold. Black bricks as interior help to have no look-throughs, and work, when shiny and new, a bit like mirrowing glass, especially featured in the front with the bows. I used only two sorts of bricks to bring structure to the walls helping to have no windows. The round bricks are grilled, because the original towers are octagonal with doors and windows.

The model weighs 261 gramm. I‘m not good in estimating the amount of bricks. I do not work with digital LEGO programs.

I wonder, if Austria would also get one of it’s buidings as architecture set one time. Another, that I built, is the Vienna International Center, but that one is a little bit too big to stand the chance to be released as a LEGO Set, wether people keep asking me, to put it here at LEGO Ideas.