Austria’s capital is known for its Habsburg past; its coffeehouses; its classical music; its modernism of 1900; and its contemporary urban progress. A well-rounded Vienna trip offers a glimpse into these layers, with plenty to eat and drink along the way.
Vienna is highly walkable and the city's public transportation counts among the best in Europe; for visitors there's a 72-hour travelcard for €17 available through the WienMobil app (Google Play; App Store).
Where to stay? The historic city center (District 1) contains most attractions, but it can feel touristy. For a more true-to-Vienna experience, I'd recommend someplace in Districts 2-9, neighborhoods that are more residential and still close to the Old City. To find out which district a location falls into, take the middle digits of its postal code: 1054 would be in District 5, for example. When I first visited, I stayed in Altstadt Vienna, a nice hotel that blends old and new in the fashionable District 7.
If you’ll find yourself intrigued, confused, overwhelmed or something else by the Habsburg legacy during your Vienna stay, know that you are not alone. Every building, every exhibition, every story somehow ties back to a strange-looking emperor. A bit of research can make an upcoming trip more meaningful. This article details the incredible rise and fall of the Habsburgs. Here are some books I read when I was new to Vienna. For more recent events in the life of the city: proceed this way.
This map features the places mentioned below.
FRIDAY
Vienna and Central Europe were ruled by the Habsburg dynasty for a long time, so it is appropriate to start a visit at the Imperial Palace, which served as the Habsburg power base for 650 years (1278-1918). In the second half of the 19th century, the Habsburg Monarchy – also known as Austria-Hungary – experienced the greatest transformation of its history. Its economy rapidly modernized and caught up with the advanced countries in Western Europe, and heavy investments in education yielded the most extensive school system on the continent.
Vienna became a place where Germans, Czechs, Poles, Slovenians, Jews, Hungarians, Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, Romanians, Ukrainians, and Italians lived in security, peace, and increasing prosperity. Vienna ballooned into one of the great cosmopolitan centers of Europe, with pioneering scientists, philosophers, architects, and artists to its name. It was the city of Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg, Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Oskar Kokoschka, and many others.
Due to the rapidly rising population, Emperor Franz Joseph finally decided to knock down the medieval city walls in order to connect the old city with its suburbs. From here on Heldenplatz, one can see the horseshoe-shaped Ringstraße and its famous Revival Style buildings that sprung up at this time. The Greek-temple style building of the central Parliament, for example, and the soaring tower of the neo-Gothic City Hall next to it.
This golden period ended with World War I and the 1918 disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy. Austria lost most of its territories and became a small country with less than seven million people. Vienna was awkwardly located at the eastern end of this truncated republic and much too big for it. Today, still, Heldenplatz exudes the kind of imperial air that is both amazing and frightening.
The grand buildings of the Imperial Palace complex are currently home to a dozen museums, such as the Imperial Treasury, the House of Austrian History, the Royal Library, the Sisi Museum, the Collection of Musical Instruments, and the Spanish Riding School. Since 1946, the Leopoldine Wing has housed the office of the Austrian President.
The nearby Augustinian Church traditionally served as the Habsburg wedding-church. For example, the union between Napoleon and his second wife, Habsburg Marie Louise, and those of Emperor Franz Joseph and Sisi were sealed here. Little of its Gothic structure is seen from the outside because the 18th-century expansion of the neighboring Court Library enveloped the church.
The right-side of the church nave contains the pyramid-shaped funerary monument of Queen Maria Theresa's favorite daughter, Maria Christina, made by Antonio Canova, the greatest sculptor of the Neoclassical period. Completed in 1805, Canova placed a procession of mourners, young and old, who are swallowed up by the dark opening of the tomb, thereby generalizing the idea of death. The figure of the blind old man with the cane is especially moving. (Canova's other major Viennese sculpture, Theseus slaying a centaur, graces the main staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.)
The Habsburg Library is one of the most stunning libraries in the world. In 1716, Emperor Charles VI (1685-1740) tasked his favorite architect, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, to design a building worthy of the vast royal book collection. As in a contemporary Italian palazzo, Roman-era artifacts decorate the staircase which leads to the astonishing Baroque library lined with marble, gold, and hardwood.
Court painter Daniel Gran frescoed the illusionistic dome showing, predictably, the countless good deeds of the Emperor, whose dignified marble statue stands underneath (the touchscreen in the main hall helps make sense of it all). Today, the library holds 200,000 books as well as 18th-century wooden globes inspired by astrology.
The Imperial Treasury provides a short history lesson about the constantly shifting Habsburg imperium through crowns, scepters, ceremonial robes, and informative wall texts. What was the Holy Roman Empire? How about the Duchy of Burgundy? The Order of the Golden Fleece? Highlights include the pearl-studded crown of the Holy Roman emperors and the silver cradle that the city of Paris gifted the son of Napoleon and Habsburg Marie Louise.
Albertinaplatz is named after the art lover Duke, Albert of Saxen-Teschen (1738-1822), who married into the Habsburg family and used his newfound fortune to buy drawings and prints by the likes of Leonardo, Dürer, Michelangelo, and Rubens. A small sample of Albert’s enviable collection is still displayed inside his vast residence, the home of the Albertina Museum today.
When Duke Albert's adopted son, Archduke Charles moved into the palatial home, he redesigned the halls in a Neoclassical style (Charles was the military general who defeated Napoleon at Aspern-Essling in 1809 and whose bronze equestrian statue anchors Heldenplatz). These days, the Albertina is best known for its permanent show, “Monet to Picasso,” which takes visitors through Impressionism, Pointillism, Fauvism, Expressionism, New Objectivity, and Surrealism. The museum also prides itself on its high-profile temporary shows.
After the 1918 collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy, most people in Austria wished to unite with Germany, but the Allied Powers vetoed this combination because they feared that it would strengthen Germany. Austria remained independent and its interwar decades fell into bloody conflicts between the private militias of the left-wing Social Democrats and the ruling conservative Christian Socials. There was no political compromise in interwar Austria, only extremism, and persistently high unemployment.
So when in March, 1938, Hitler’s German troops invaded Austria without a fight, a huge crowd of people cheered Hitler on Vienna's Heldenplatz. Austria officially became the southeastern corner of Germany. This Nazi period (1938-1945) resulted in the complete elimination of Vienna’s Jewish community, which had been the third biggest in Europe after that of Warsaw and Budapest, with nearly 200,000 people (the majority was able to flee from Austria before the deportations began).
Before the Holocaust, Jewish people had been central to Vienna’s arts, sciences, journalism, and most middle class professions. While Vienna is a thriving city today, many people believe that it hasn’t been able to revive itself as an intellectual center largely because of the loss of this sizable Jewish community.
The prosecution of Austrian Nazis lost steam after WWII, because in the shifting politics of the Cold War, Western countries had no incentive to alienate Austria. As a result, Austria started to view itself as a victim rather than a co-perpetrator of Nazi oppression. This rewriting of history continued for four decades, when in the late 1980s Austria was forced to confront its shared responsibility in the Nazi crimes.
I’m mentioning this because here on Albertinaplatz stands the first major public memorial in Vienna that specifically addressed the Holocaust. The Gate of Violence depicts those who died in concentration camps. Behind it lies the bronze figure of an old Jewish man in a kippah, who is on all fours and forced to clean the street with a brush, as many Jews were made to do in 1938. The two statues in the back project a sense of hope: Orpheus pulls himself free from the underworld, while a granite slab is inscribed with excerpts from the 1945 Austrian declaration of independence from Nazi rule.
Nearby Neue Markt is known for the Habsburg family’s burial chamber, located below the church of the Capuchin monks. The imperial crypt contains 150 tombs, including those of twelve emperors, starting with the vaults of Emperor Matthias and his wife, Anna, who founded the place in 1618. It’s fascinating to observe the evolution of tomb styles. The exuberant monument of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband Francis rivals the grand papal tombs in Rome. Conversely, the enlightened emperors, such as Joseph II, rest in sober, Neoclassical style.
More fun facts: Almost every Habsburg archduchess' name included Maria, because the Habsburg was the most traditionalist Catholic dynasty in Europe. The tomb of Queen Sisi, who was fond of the Hungarians, is usually laid with Hungarian flags. The tombs culminate with that of Franz Joseph (1830-1916), who went from being a hated autocrat who banned the constitution to a widely respected arch-grandfather, who earned the loyalty of the people. His death, after 68 years in power, was mourned equally by peasants in Tirol, Bohemia, and Hungary, merchants in Vienna, Budapest, Trieste, and aristocrats on their estates throughout Austria-Hungary.
Unlike in Hungary, where the Communist regime persecuted the aristocracy and confiscated all of its assets, Austria still has a thriving community of blue bloods who mostly live off their family lands. It is this part of the city center, around Neuer Markt, where one can spot many of them: uniformly dressed and with conspicuous mannerisms that are a source of both emulation and ridicule.
The most recognized symbol of Vienna is the Saint Stephen’s Cathedral (Stephansdom), a vast Gothic style church whose soaring south tower is visible from near and far. Cloaked in perennial semi-darkness, the place is both intimidating and spirit-lifting in the way only medieval cathedrals can be (parts of it are accessible for free).
It was the ambitious Habsburg Rudolf IV (1339-1365) who shouldered the church’s construction costs in an effort to keep up with the urban progress of Prague, then ruled by his father-in-law, Luxembourg Charles. During his short life, Rudolf also founded the University of Vienna, and his cenotaph is located at the end of the church's left aisle.
Stained glass windows, winged triptychs, thick red marble tombs, soaring piers, and a wonderful pulpit comprise the 14th-century Gothic repertoire, which is overlaid with Baroque side altars. To the left of the entrance, in a small chapel hides the remains of the great military General, Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), whose striking summer palace, the Belvedere, we will encounter later. The church sells a combined ticket which provides entry also to the neighboring Dom Museum and to the towers and the crypt.
Austria’s most prominent architect from the recent past has been Hans Hollein (1934-2014). The Pritzker-winning Hollein had an elevated sense for proportions and beauty, and he transcended the playful but often surface-level postmodern style. But his buildings could also be controversial. “What’s this thing doing in the city center?” is a question that many people have asked since the idiosyncratic Haas Haus was erected in 1990 across from the St. Stephen’s Cathedral. I will not try to sway your opinion either way.
The Graben and the Kohlmarkt, two upscale shopping streets today, connect the Saint Stephen’s Cathedral with the Imperial Palace (Hofburg). In a side street off the Graben hides the the impossibly named Trzesniewski, an iconic eatery opened in 1902 by a Polish cook and specializing in bite-sized, open-faced sandwiches. It’s one of the best food options in this highly touristy part of town. Locals, too, drop in for a quick bite with a side of small beer. The creamy egg-based toppings are all tasty, as is the horseradish-spiked spread with grated carrots.
That unbridled, high-Baroque monument soaring from the Graben? Built in 1694, it's a plague column doubling as political propaganda. Amid blobs of white clouds and upbeat angels, we see Habsburg Emperor Leopold on the pedestal, encircled by the coats of arms of his territories and pleading to the golden Holy Trinity up top to save his people from the plague. The relief panels show scenes of the plague-ridden city. Similar plague columns scatter across the former Habsburg Monarchy but this is the most extreme example.
If you can’t resist the lure of a delicious plate of shredded pancake (Kaiserschmarrn) with a side of plum preserves, then wait out the line of fellow tourists outside Demel, a famous pastry shop founded in 1786. An official purveyor to the royal family, Demel has retained its neo-Baroque interior with crystal chandeliers and apron-wearing servers. Here, I have a list of coffeehouses and pastry shops that are less touristy.
The square outside the Imperial Palace (Michaelerplatz) is famous for two buildings. The white church on the left, the Michaelerkirche, is a beautiful study in architectural styles: the neoclassical entrance portal opens to a Gothic nave whose ribbed vault leads to an amazing Baroque altar. The church is dedicated to Archangel Michael, who is shown crushing Satan atop the main entrance (free entry).
The other is the Looshaus on the right. When this decor-deprived building of Leopold Goldman's men’s clothing company appeared in 1909, a huge scandal erupted. No elaborate window frames? Simple plaster covering the upper floors of a building located right across the Imperial Palace where Emperor Franz Joseph lived? Travesty! Architect Adolf Loos actually did dress up the ground floor: the main entrance with gorgeous Tuscan columns of expensive green Cipollino marble, the side entrance with speckled red Skyros marble.
The conflict was finally resolved when Loos proposed the addition of bronze window boxes to the upper floors, in which, according to the land registry, flowers had to be kept. Today, architect Adolf Loos is regarded as a key figure of modern architecture.
It’s impossible to visit all the museums of the Imperial Palace. Many people opt for the Sisi Museum, which is in part dedicated to the lonely, absent, and peripatetic wife of Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph. Many people view Sisi as a free-spirited proto-feminist, who had the courage to break free from the confines of the royal court and live a life of her own choosing.
In addition to Sisi’s personal items – letters, dresses, cosmetic bags, even her swanky rail carriage and Demel orders – the museum also features the lavish neo-Rococo imperial apartments where the royal couple spent the winter months. This museum overlaps with the Habsburg summer palace, Schönbrunn, on the Vienna outskirts, which is why I usually recommend that people visit one or the other.
High time for dinner, and your first night should probably include traditional Viennese food. In the center, my go-to is Gasthaus Pöschl. Yes, some tourists also stumble in here, but you’ll notice the lively banter between the kind waitstaff and the longtime regulars (“Christian Gihl, from 6 p.m.” warns a small brass plate bolted onto the bar counter).
The specialties of the house include the flavorful beef broth soup (Rindsuppe), the Tafelspitz, the deceptively simple-sounding rice and meat combo (Reisfleisch), the crispy and juicy schnitzel, the mushroom ravioli (Steinpilzeravioli), the caramelized Kaiserschmarrn, and the feather-light Topfenknödel. Pair them with local wines and try to book ahead (by phone: +4301 5135288). As elsewhere across Vienna, mains are €15-25.
For a nightcap, head to Loos Bar. Adolf Loos, whose building on Michaelerplatz outraged the royals, designed this dark cocktail den in 1907 hidden on a downtown side street off Kärntner Straße. The inside embodies Loos's stylistic philosophy: exquisite materials – marble, mahogany, alabaster – without superfluous decorations. The inside is tiny, the impact striking (lots of mirrors are meant to enlarge the space). Scoring one of the few precious seats can be a challenge.
SATURDAY
Start the day early, many breakfast options out there, then visit the Belvedere Palace. Prince Eugene of Savoy wasn’t just a great military general who routed the Ottoman army, but he also knew how to enjoy the finer things in life as evidenced by his enormous Baroque summer estate, known as the Belvedere, located within walking distance of Vienna’s city center.
The Prince’s former dominion currently consists of two museums. The main one, the Upper Belvedere, surveys Austrian paintings from the Middle Ages to the present day. Many visitors head straight to Gustav Klimt's famous kiss, but one can enjoy less crowded halls with the soulful Baroque paintings of Paul Troger and Franz Anton Maulbertsch, not to mention Solimena's incredible altar canvas in the Prince's private chapel.
The Biedermeier was a Habsburg specialty – French Neoclassicism tamed to middle class tastes and wallets, as shown by the small pictures of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Peter Fendi, and Josef Danhauser. The wrenching self-portraits of Richard Gerstl and Egon Schiele represent Vienna's pioneering expressionism from the turn of the 20th century. One can also just roam the Baroque garden-park and the neighboring botanical garden. The more modestly sized Lower Belvedere houses temporary shows.
That grim corporate-looking building on nearby Karlsplatz? A great treasure. It's the Vienna City Museum, presenting the history of Austria’s capital on three levels. Artifacts from the Saint Stephen's Cathedral; Ottoman military drawings in preparation of their 1683 siege of Vienna; the Metternich-era; the glory days of Austria-Hungary exemplified by the Ringstraße culture and Hans Makart's portraits; the taming of the Danube; the years of Red Vienna; the Nazi period and the Holocaust; the post-war boom; and the urban renewal of the city center. A lot to think about. Free entry!
The museum faces one of the great Baroque churches of Europe: the Karlskirche. The building embodies the Catholic victory of the Habsburg Counter-Reformation and reflects the 16 years that the building's architect, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, spent absorbing the Rome of Bernini, Borromini, and Pietro da Cortona. Together with Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt, Fischer von Erlach transformed Vienna into one of the great Baroque cities of Europe beside Rome and Paris.
Those two Trajanesque columns flanking the portico of the church evoke the symbol of Spain – Pillars of Hercules – recently lost by the Habsburgs and still grieving it. Both the wonderful ceiling fresco and the high altar's sculpture group show the Counter-Reformationist archbishop, Carlo Borromeo, rising to heaven (recognizable by his projecting nose, Borromeo was the patron saint of Emperor Charles VI, who commissioned the church). The admission ticket includes access to the panoramic terrace up top.
If it’s time for a snack, try one of Vienna’s sausage kiosks, for example Zum scharfen René near the City Museum. Sausage shops are notoriously democratic institutions: construction workers, students, and elegant office people stand side-by-side as they wolf down a greasy, cheese-filled Käsekrainer. One can also opt for roasted Bratwurst, cooked Frankfurters, smoked Waldviertler, or paprika-spiked Debreziner. If you specify, the vendor will serve you bite-sized pieces. Even better with beer on the side. Cash only!
For good coffee around here, I often go to Knockbox, which used to be a sausage stand but has since transformed into a specialty cafe kiosk. You’ll have to drink it standing against the wooden counter, which is part of the experience, as is eavesdropping on the engineering students who frequent Knockbox from the nearby University of Technology.
When a group of artists headed by Gustav Klimt broke from the Viennese painters’ association, one of its members designed this strange-looking white building with a golden dome to house their own exhibitions (the costs were paid for by the Jewish industrialist, Karl Wittgenstein, father of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein). Joseph Maria Olbrich’s 1898 “temple of art” has since become a symbol of Vienna.
Today, the ground floor houses contemporary artworks inspired by the Secessionist founding principle, inscribed on the building’s facade and coined by the art critic, Lajos Hevesi: “To every age its art, to art its freedom.” Across the street from it stands the Academy of Fine Arts, a wonderful Revival Style building that has trained generations of painters and architects. It is the same art academy that, tragically, turned down Adolf Hitler’s multiple attempts at admission.
Recently pedestrianized, Vienna's Mariahilfer Straße is the city’s main shopping street lined with big-box retailers. One of my favored coffeehouses lies also here: Cafe Ritter. Apart from its museums, Vienna's coffeehouse culture is the city's greatest treasure. Since the mid-19th century, locals have been socializing at these grand establishments complete with suit-and-tie-wearing waiters, oversized windows, and neatly laid out newspapers.
Journalists, artists, businesspeople – everyone has their go-tos. The coffee itself is usually pretty bad, but despite the recent advance of minimalist new-wave specialty cafes, Viennese love for the traditional coffeehouse hasn’t abated. Coffeehouses are open throughout the day and serve breakfast, traditional dishes, and pastries. Wifi is rare, but lingering okay, even expected. At Ritter, please don’t leave without an order of a goulash soup and an apple strudel buried in vanilla custard.
Those with extra energy might want to add a stop to the nearby Imperial Furniture Collection. Once the Habsburg furniture storage and maintenance depot, this museum rightfully claims to hold the largest collection of exhibited furniture in the world. Four expansive floors are densely packed with luxurious lamps, clocks, spittoons, chairs, sofas, prayer benches, baby cribs, desks, marriage beds, wheelchairs, and even portable toilets collected from the various royal palaces, from Laxenburg to Schönbrunn, from Gödöllő to Bad Ischl, from the Hofburg to Trieste.
Vienna is the city of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, the Strausses, Mahler, and Schönberg, so it wouldn't be out of place to attend a classical music concert or an opera even if that isn't part of your regular routine. My favorite is the Musikverein, home of the famous New Year's concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, but the Wiener Konzerthaus and the State Opera also have excellent performances.
For dinner, you could visit a restaurant that presents the contemporary side of Vienna. The fashionable restaurants and wine bars, of course, are often not so different from those found in other big cities in terms of decor, atmosphere, and culinary approach. Bruder, for example, traffics in fermented foods, small plates, and natural wines, but some of its dishes also evoke local dining traditions.
SUNDAY
As mentioned, the Habsburg was the most Catholic dynasty in all of Europe: they regularly expelled Vienna’s enterprising Lutheran residents and forced everyone else for centuries to adopt a strict Roman Catholic lifestyle that was rooted in religious rituals and piety. Today, despite a long history of socialist politics – the Social Democratic party (SPÖ) has won every single election and nominated every single mayor in Vienna since 1945 – Vienna is still a Catholic city. This is most observable on Sundays, when apart from churches, the whole city closes down and an unnerving silence pervades the city.
This makes Sunday mornings ideal for attending a church music program. One doesn’t need to be religious to appreciate the soulful music that sets the liturgies of several Vienna churches. It's not unusual that a full orchestra and a choir perform a mass composed by the likes of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, or Bruckner. The Court Chapel inside the Imperial Palace, featuring the Vienna Boys’ Choir, and the nearby Augustinerkirche are best-known for their music programs.
If you enjoyed the coffeehouse vibes, grab breakfast at Tirolerhof, another legendary institution (try Joseph Brot across the street if you prefer new-wave bakeries). Then walk to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, one of the great old masters collections in Europe. The theatrical building itself is memorable: emperor Franz Joseph had the German starchitect Gottfried Semper move to Vienna in the 1870s for the commission, which also included the building for the Museum of Natural History symmetrically opposite.
The Kunsthistorisches is known for its paintings by Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Titian, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Caravaggio, Rubens, van Dyck, Velázquez, and many others (here, my favorites). A museum inside the museum is the Kunstkammer – cabinet of curiosities – with wonderful statuettes, gobelins, clocks, board games and other objects the Habsburgs deemed exotic. The marble busts throughout will make you appreciate the famously protruding "Habsburg Jaw." On Thursdays, the museum is open until 9 p.m. If you're planning repeat visits, get the annual pass for €53.
In 2001, the city converted the Habsburg imperial horse stable into a massive cultural and social hub (MuseumsQuartier) with two newly erected museums, one for early modern art (Leopold), another for contemporary art (mumok). In the case of the Leopold, the Austrian state made an agreement with Rudolf Leopold, a private collector who held the largest collection of Egon Schiele paintings in the world: the state would build a swanky museum and pay for its maintenance if the works could be made accessible to the public. Last year, the Leopold Museum drew 440.000 visitors, its best year ever.
An oft-heard criticism of Vienna is that it can feel too clean and orderly. All the prosperity leaves no room for a bit of irreverence. Too much melange, too little espresso, if you will. Let me point you to Cafe Kafka to prove this isn’t so. Opened in 2001, this bar draws many people who would seamlessly blend into any city’s alternative scene. No matter whether one comes here at 11 a.m. or 11 p.m., the place is filled to capacity with brainy regulars of all ages. This, too, is Vienna.
As is Aspern Seestadt: Vienna's biggest housing development currently. Not visible from the city center, but parts of Vienna have completely transformed in the past decades. New neighborhoods have sprung up in place of dilapidated industrial sites and train stations to keep up with the city’s rapid population growth fueled by economic migrants and refugees. Examples include the Nordbahnviertel and the Sonnwendviertel, but most impressive is Aspern Seestadt, a city within the city and a textbook example of urban planning.
Since 2014, more than 12,000 residents have moved here and there will be units for up to 25,000. Most apartments are rent-controlled and subsidized by the city. The U2 subway line was extended to connect the neighborhood to downtown Vienna. There’s an increasing number of businesses and anything locals might need: grocery stores, pharmacies, kindergartens, middle and high schools, a public library, parks, sports facilities, and even a newly constructed lake with a beach. Every street is named after a woman. See it to believe it.
My content is free and independent. I rely in large part on readers to support my work. I'm grateful if you make a one-time payment (PayPal, Venmo, Revolut) or subscribe to my weekly newsletter in which I write about Budapest and Vienna.