The museum building (Arsenal object number 18) is the centrepiece of Vienna's Arsenal, a huge military complex previously consisting of a total of 72 buildings erected in the wake of the 1848/49 revolution. The Arsenal was the largest building project of the young Kaiser Franz Joseph I in his first years of reign, and served to consolidate his neoabsolutist position of power, as opposed to the revolutionary Vienna of 1848. It was Danish architect Theophil Hansen who designed what was then referred to as the weapons museum.