VIENNA · AUSTRIA
Palaces, concertos, and the long afternoon.
The Habsburg palaces, a different concert every night, coffee houses that count as landmarks, and the day trips out along the Danube to Hallstatt, the Wachau and Salzburg.
Only in Vienna
Vienna keeps what other cities lost.
Plenty of capitals have palaces and old masters. The living concert tradition, the imperial riding school and the coffee house as a way of life belong to this city alone.
The city of music
A concert where the music was written
Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and the Strauss family all lived and composed in Vienna, and the city never stopped playing. Most evenings you can still hear them in the room they were written for: a gilded hall, a baroque church, a palace salon, by candlelight.
- 1 Vienna: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Concert in Karlskirche
- 2 Vienna: Classic Ensemble Vienna in St. Peter’s Church Ticket
- 3 Vienna: Classical Concert at St. Stephen’s Cathedral
Four centuries on
The white stallions of the Hofburg
The Spanish Riding School has schooled its Lipizzaner stallions in the same baroque hall since the 1500s, the last place on earth still practising classical dressage the imperial way. The morning exercise under the chandeliers is the part people plan a trip around.
- 1 Vienna Spanish Riding School Guided Tour
- 2 Performance Of The Lipizzans At Spanish Riding School
- 3 Vienna: Spanish Riding School Guided Architectural Tour
A table, an afternoon
The Viennese coffee house
A marble table, a melange, a slice of Sachertorte and a stack of newspapers you may hold all day: the coffee house is listed by UNESCO as living heritage, and an hour inside one explains why. Nobody is ever going to hurry you out.
- 1 Vienna for Food Lovers: Cafés, Markets & Austrian Cuisine
- 2 Authentic Vienna Food Tour inc. lunch, street food, 3 drinks
- 3 Vienna: Culinary Experience at Restaurant Stefanie
The one to book first
If you reserve one thing, make it this.
More travellers book this than anything else in Vienna.
The classics
Vienna's Most Popular Experiences
Schönbrunn, the Hofburg, a concert under the chandeliers and the wheel above the Prater. The days most visitors come for.
Where to begin
The Vienna a first visit is built around.
Schönbrunn and the Hofburg, a night at the concert, the great museums, a cruise on the Danube and the day trips beyond. The handful of experiences most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big decision
How to hear Vienna.
There is a concert almost every night, and the room matters as much as the programme. Three ways to hear the city’s composers, depending on the evening you want.
The Hofburg
Six hundred years of Habsburgs.
The Hofburg was the seat of the dynasty for as long as it ruled, a city within the city. The imperial apartments, the silver vault, a treasury holding the crown jewels and the Holy Lance, and the rooms where Empress Elisabeth tried to slip the leash of court life. You can still walk all of it.
- 1 Vienna: Skip-the-Line Sisi Museum, Hofburg and Gardens Tour
- 2 Vienna: Imperial Treasury in the Hofburg Palace
- 3 Vienna: Imperial Crypt Entrance Ticket
Museums & art
An empire spent its fortune on art.
Klimt’s Kiss glows in a gold room at the Belvedere. The Kunsthistorisches holds the Habsburg pictures, the Bruegels and the Vermeer; the Albertina keeps the prints and the drawings. Vienna bought the best of Europe for four centuries, and nearly all of it is still here.
The best of Vienna’s museums →A city of palaces
The Habsburgs built, and never stopped.
Schönbrunn for the summer, the Hofburg for the winter, the Belvedere for a war hero turned art collector. Vienna keeps more baroque palaces than it can quite use, their green copper domes rising over the rooftops, their gardens open to anyone who wants to walk in.
Tour the palaces →By place
The Vienna everyone comes to see.
Schönbrunn for the gardens. The Hofburg for the empire. The riding school for the horses. The Prater for the wheel. The Danube for the water, and the old town for the lanes around St Stephen’s.
By interest
Pick how to spend the day.
A concert if you came for the music. A palace if you came for the empire. A coffee house and a museum for a slow one, the Danube for the water, or a fiaker through the lanes at a walking pace.
Beyond the city
The Danube, the Alps and three capitals.
Vienna sits at the crossing of Central Europe, and the best day trips leave it behind entirely: the vineyards and abbey of the Wachau, the lake village of Hallstatt, Mozart’s Salzburg, and Bratislava or Budapest an hour down the river.
See the best day trips →Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in Vienna? Here is a long weekend that takes in the palaces, the art, the music and one day beyond the ring road.
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