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Beyond the Augustinerkirche lies the Albertina ( www.albertina.at ), a mishmash of a building, incorporating parts of the former Augustinian monastery, the late eighteenth-century Taroucca Palace and the southernmost bastion of the Hofburg. There are steps up to the bastion, which overlooks the back of the Staatsoper and is surmounted by a grand equestrian statue of the Archduke Albrecht, who vanquished the Italians at the Battle of Custozza, one of the few bright moments in the otherwise disastrous Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Founded in 1768 by Albrecht, Duke of Saxony-Teschen (after whom the gallery is named), the Albertina boasts one of the largest collections of graphic arts in the world, with approximately 50,000 drawings, etchings and watercolours, and more than 1.5 million printed works. Within its catalogue, it has some 43 drawings by Raphael, 70 by Rembrandt, 145 by Durer - more than any other gallery in the world - and 150 by Schiele, plus many more by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rubens, Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, Klimt and Kokoschka. With such a vast archive, the gallery can only hope to show a tiny fraction at any one time, and in any case, graphics are notoriously sensitive to light. As a result, the Albertina only ever stages temporary exhibitions, devoted to one artist, period or theme, as well as showing a few facsimiles giving some idea of the range of the collection. After more than a decade's worth of refurbishment, the Albertina is due to open once more in the near future, with newly expanded exhibition halls, an international study centre, a winter garden, and a restaurant on the terrace, and whatever the exhibition, it'll be worth a look. The Philipphof, a typically ornate Ringstrasse-style building that was home to the exclusive Jockey Club, originally stood to the northeast of the Albertina. However, during the air raid of March 12, 1945, the building received two direct hits, killing several hundred people sheltering in the basement. The lot remained vacant until the 1980s, when the city council commissioned Alfred Hrdlicka to erect a Monument Against War and Fascism , a controversial move given the site's history and its extreme prominence. The monument includes a crouching Jew scrubbing the pavement, recalling the days following the Anschluss, when some of the city's Jews were forced to clean up anti-Nazi slogans with scrubbing brushes dipped in acid. Many Jews found the image degrading, among them Simon Wiesenthal, who successfully campaigned for a proper Holocaust memorial to be erected in Vienna, which can now be seen in Judenplatz.
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