The Czech-owned Canaletto masterpiece that traveled through history

An 18th-century painting usually displayed at Prague Castle’s Lobkowicz Palace is having a moment in Vienna, where it has become one of the stars of the major Canaletto & Bellotto exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM), which opened in March 2026.

London: The River Thames on Lord Mayor’s Day, painted by Venetian master Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto, and owned by the Czech noble family Lobkowicz, now greets visitors as they enter the museum’s main gallery on the second floor.

But the painting’s journey, from London to Bohemia and Vienna and through the upheavals of 20th-century Europe, is almost as remarkable as the scene it depicts.

The Vienna exhibition brings together dozens of city views, or vedute, by Canaletto and his nephew Bernardo Bellotto.

Alongside famous images of Venice, London, and Dresden are scenes connected to the history of the Czech lands, including views of aristocratic residences in Bohemia and a depiction of the ruins of Devín Castle in present-day Slovakia.

These highly detailed paintings, often created with the aid of tools such as the camera obscura, were the equivalent of a luxury travel souvenir, commissioned or collected by Europe’s aristocratic travelers as reminders of the cities they encountered during the Grand Tour.

This was the role the paintings played for Ferdinand Philipp, the 6th Prince Lobkowicz, who encountered London during his Grand Tour and later brought Canaletto’s views of the city back to Bohemia as a record of his travels.

But the story of London: The River Thames on Lord Mayor’s Day is as winding as a river meander. So much so that the Lobkowicz Collection has dedicated entire pages of its website to its travels.

Shortly after its creation around 1748, the painting traveled with Prince Lobkowicz back to Bohemia, where it hung at the family’s Roudnice nad Labem residence before later moving with the Lobkowicz collections to Vienna.

During the turbulent 20th century, the family’s collections were confiscated first by the Nazis and later by the communist government in Czechoslovakia.

The Canaletto featured in Vienna today remained in Bohemia throughout the Second World War. Its companion painting, The River Thames Looking Towards Westminster from Lambeth, also part of the Lobkowicz collection, was part of a far more dramatic wartime episode.

Taken by the Nazis to the salt mines at Altaussee, Austria, one of the underground repositories where thousands of stolen artworks were hidden, it was later recovered by the Allied Monuments Men.

After the Velvet Revolution, both paintings were restituted to the Lobkowicz family and eventually found their home at Prague Castle. Today, the two Canaletto views have briefly parted as one captivates art lovers in Vienna, while the other remains in Prague.

The painting would eventually return to London more than 250 years later, when it was loaned to the National Maritime Museum for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee exhibition in 2012.

The exhibition also brings Canaletto’s vedute into the 21st century, using digital animation and new technologies to reveal details hidden within the paintings. At the Kunsthistorisches Museum, visitors see elements of the bustling Thames come to life as Canaletto imagined them in the 18th century.

Meanwhile, back at Prague Castle, visitors to the Lobkowicz Palace can still encounter the traveling masterpiece through an immersive projection, allowing them to explore animated details of the painting even while the original hangs in Vienna.

The exhibition in Vienna runs through Sept. 6, after which the masterpiece will return to its permanent home at Lobkowicz Palace on the grounds of Prague Castle.