Austria’s capital is known for its Habsburg past; its coffeehouses; its classical music; its modernism of 1900; and its contemporary social housing. A well-rounded Vienna trip offers a glimpse into these layers, with plenty to eat and drink along the way. It makes good sense to explore Vienna's major landmarks in the historic center (District 1), but it doesn't mean one can't also venture away and glimpse the everyday city locals know. The list below includes both options, with information on each specific location.
1. Visit the Kunsthistorisches Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day during high season, otherwise closed on Monday; €21 admission): A trip to Vienna for its museums alone is worth it. Above all stands the Kunsthistorisches, one of the great old masters collections in the world. The permanent show highlights works by the likes of Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Pieter Bruegel, Caravaggio, Rubens, and Velázquez (here, my favorites).
The collection originates from two art-loving Habsburgs, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612), and the governor of the Spanish Netherlands, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614-1662). The Kunstkammer, on the ground floor, features strange and wonderful objects that fascinated the royal family. Through marble busts, one can also study the notorious "Habsburg Jaw," the result of centuries of inbreeding.
2. Visit the Vienna City Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; free admission): Recently refurbished and extended, it's completely enthralling to explore the three expansive floors of the Vienna City Museum on Karlsplatz. Try to decide ahead of time which time periods interest you most and focus your attention accordingly. One can learn about everything from Roman, medieval, and Baroque Vienna, to Biedermeier, Austro-Hungarian, Red, Nazi, and contemporary Vienna. The information is generously illustrated with objects and little reading is required. Free admission!
3. Visit the Austrian Gallery at the Belvedere (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day; €20 admission to the Upper Belvedere, €29 combined ticket; advance ticket purchase): You don't need me to tell you that Gustav Klimt's famous kiss is located in the Upper Belvedere Gallery, but I'm here to say that this stunning Baroque palace, once the summer home of the art-loving field marshal, Prince Eugene Savoy (1663-1736), is an Austrian National Gallery with other treasures too. For example: Gothic winged altars, Franz Anton Maulbertsch's Baroque paintings, and cute Biedermeier works (Neoclassical but more charming). Also here: a vast park abutting the neighboring Botanical Garden. Also part of the complex, the Lower Belvedere is usually dedicated to temporary exhibitions.
4. Visit the Leopold Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Tuesday; €17 admission): The Leopold Museum celebrates Vienna's pioneering early-modern (1900) artists and art movements. The collection is grounded in the paintings of the Expressionist trio of Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele, but visitors can also learn about the architecture of Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos, and survey the design objects of the Austrian arts and craft workshop, the Wiener Werkstätte. The temporary shows, usually high-profile, are downstairs.
5. Visit the Albertina Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day; €20 admission): The Albertina Museum holds Central Europe's leading collection of international early-modern art, covering the period from about 1870 to 1950, from Impressionism to Surrealism. There are holes and gaps, but one will find wonderful paintings by Manet, Matisse, Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Picasso, and others.
Originally, the museum was the residence of the passionate art collector Duke Albert of Saxen-Teschen (1738-1822). Some of the Duke's favorite artworks – old masters drawings and etchings – are also displayed in the palatial halls together with the wonderful Neoclassical and Biedermeier furnishings of his adopted son, Archduke Charles.
6. Experience Vienna’s traditional coffeehouse culture: Ornate interiors with high ceilings, suit-and-tie-wearing waiters, customers lingering with the physical paper over a cup of coffee and an apple strudel. This isn’t a portrayal of long-ago Vienna, but a scene from the present day. Countless traditional coffeehouses still serve as social hubs for local residents, young and old. Journalists, artists, politicians, businesspeople – everyone has their go-tos. My favorites include Café Bräunerhof and Café Prückel.
7. Tour the Austrian Parliament for free (location; guided tours Monday through Saturday; free admission upon advance registration): After a five-year gut renovation, the Austrian central parliament building recently reopened to the public, offering free guided tours upon advance registration. The tours go for about an hour and take visitors through the main parts, including both of the chambers. Built in the 1870s, during the peak of secular liberal culture, the Greek-architecture style celebrates the primacy of reason and knowledge (this liberalism didn't last very long).
8. Walk around the Imperial Palace known as the Hofburg (location): Vienna's Imperial Palace served as the Habsburg dynasty's power base for 650 years (1278-1918). Today, still, Heldenplatz exudes the kind of imperial air that is both amazing and frightening. Currently, this striking Baroque and neo-Baroque building complex is home to a dozen museums, such as the Imperial Treasury, the House of Austrian History, the striking Baroque Library, the Sisi Museum, the Collection of Musical Instruments, and the Spanish Riding School. Since 1946, the Leopoldine Wing houses the office of the Austrian President.
9. Try a traditional Austrian restaurant: Viennese food is a collection of dishes from territories once under the Habsburg crown: schnitzel from northern Italy, knödel from the Czech parts, goulash from Hungary, and so on. Dozens of restaurants – Gasthaus or Beisl – serve up excellent versions of these hefty plates. Delicious offal dishes, such as roasted veal liver (Kalbsleber), also appear on menus, and no meal is complete without a Kaiserschmarrn or a Palatschinken dessert with a side of fruit preserves. My favorites include Pöschl, Rebhuhn, and Blauensteiner.
10. Roam Vienna’s Baroque City Center: Rome is the capital of the Baroque, but Vienna isn’t far behind. Fueled by a general sense of euphoria after the 1683 defeat of Ottoman Turkey, stunning churches and Baroque winter palaces sprung up in Vienna’s city center (District 1), designed and frescoed by an army of Italy-trained artists and architects, most famously Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt. Roaming the streets will give you a sense, but specific examples include the Court Library, the Palais Daun-Kinsky, the Palais Schönborn-Batthyány, the Palais Liechtenstein, the Peterskirche, and the Karlskirche.
11. Visit the Habsburg summer palace (location; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day; €20-40 admission; advance ticket purchase): If you haven’t tired of the Habsburgs yet, I recommend you take the half-hour journey by public transport to Schönbrunn, the ruling family’s former summer residence on the Vienna outskirts. The endless Rococo halls are predictably grand and glamorous, but the living quarters can be notably revealing – such as the subdued study of the workaholic Emperor, Franz Joseph (1830-1916). The palace’s enormous garden is accessible for free and fun to explore. Beside the palace stands the Imperial Carriage Museum to explore how the rich and the wealthy got around in days of yore.
12. Visit the St. Stephen’s Cathedral (location; 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day; free admission to parts of the church, €25 combined ticket): Absurdly large and cloaked in semi-darkness, the Saint Stephen’s, Vienna’s most famous church, is intimidating and mysterious in the way only medieval cathedrals can be. Stained glass windows, winged triptychs, thick red marble tombs, soaring piers, and a wonderful pulpit comprise the Gothic repertoire of the interior, which is overlaid with Baroque side altars. A small chapel to the left of the entrance hides the remains of the great military General, Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736).
Parts of the church are accessible for free, but the combined ticket provides entry also to the neighboring Dom Museum – with a memorable portrait of Habsburg Rudolf IV who shouldered the construction costs – and to the towers and the crypt, the latter piled with human skeletal remains and royal intestines.
13. Graben – Kohlmarkt: The Kohlmarkt and the Graben, two upscale shopping streets today, connect the Imperial Palace (Hofburg) with the Saint Stephen’s Cathedral. That exuberant monument soaring from the Graben? It's a so-called plague column, built in theatrical high-Baroque style (1694) and 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 one is the most extreme example.
14. Take in Vienna’s architecture: Vienna has a layered architectural past, ranging from Gothic churches to slick contemporary buildings by the likes of Zaha Hadid. I’m most taken by the Baroque palaces of the city center, by Otto Wagner’s brand of Viennese Secession, by the early modern houses of Adolf Loos, and by the daring postmodern style of the recent past. Here, my favorites.
15. Stroll through the Ringstraße: In the 1850s, Emperor Franz Joseph decided to knock down the medieval city walls and fortification bastions to make space for an elegant boulevard – Ringstraße – between the historic city center and what used to be the Vienna suburbs.
The architectural style was a mishmash from earlier periods, as evidenced by the neo-Greek style Parliament building, the neo-Renaissance university, and the neo-Gothic City Hall. At a leisurely pace, it takes less than an hour to walk from one end (Schottenring) to the other (Otto Wagner’s Postsparkasse building). There are several cafes in between, both classically elegant, such as Cafe Landtmann, and fashionably chic, such as Cafe Exchange.
16. Visit the smaller museums: In addition to Vienna's great museums mentioned above, it’s also worth venturing to the less popular collections. For example, the Austrian History Museum presents the country’s post-Habsburg period, the Architecture Center sheds light on Vienna’s successful social housing system, the Beethoven Museum brings alive the life of the great composer, while the Jewish Museum details Vienna’s rollercoaster Jewish history.
17. Go to a classical music concert: Vienna is the city of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, the Strausses, Mahler, and Schönberg, so attending a classical music concert or an opera wouldn't be out of place even if that sort of thing isn't part of your regular routine. The Musikverein, home of the famous New Year's concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, is a good place to start, but the Wiener Konzerthaus and the State Opera also have excellent performances.
18. Attend a church music program: One of the legacies of the Habsburg period is that Vienna is still very Catholic. This is most observable on Sundays, when apart from churches, the whole city closes down and an unnerving silence pervades the town. One doesn't need to be religious to appreciate the soulful music that sets the liturgies of several Vienna churches on Sunday mornings. It's not unusual that a full orchestra and a choir perform a mass composed by the likes of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, or Bruckner. Best-known for their music program are the Court Chapel inside the Hofburg, featuring the Vienna Boys’ Choir (successor of the Habsburg Court Chapel Choir), and the nearby Augustinerkirche.
19. Stroll through the Central Cemetery (location): If you enjoy roaming among the graves of the famous, add Vienna’s picturesque garden cemetery (Zentralfriedhof) to your itinerary. Some of the heavyweights who rest here include composers Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Schönberg, Ligeti; architects and designers Michael Thonet, Theophil Hansen, Friedrich von Schmidt, Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos; writers Arthur Schnitzler and Franz Werfel; and politicians Bruno Kreisky and the controversial Vienna mayor, Karl Lueger.
A few tips: take the tram to Tor 2, the main entrance; the scenic graves line the main path in sections 14, 15 and 32, 33; round out your visit at Concordia Schlössl, with famously good schnitzels, at the sausage shop by the entrance, or the excellent pastry chain Oberlaa, within the cemetery.
20. Pay tribute to Vienna’s Holocaust memorials: Before the Holocaust, Vienna had the third largest Jewish community in Europe (after Warsaw and Budapest). As elsewhere, Jews punched above their weight, giving the country countless scientists, intellectuals, artists, and businessmen, people such as Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Arthur Schnitzler, Joseph Roth, and Stefan Zweig.
Austria has just recently started to confront its complicity in the Shoah, when 65,000 Viennese Jews were murdered in death camps with support from the local population and many more expelled from the country. These memorials serve as reminders.
21. Spend time in the Volksgarten (location): A visit to Vienna's precious Volksgarten feels like being in a fairy tale. But those dramatic backdrop buildings – the Burgtheater, the Imperial Palace, the Thesuses Temple, the Court Museums – turn out to be more than just stage design. Not to mention that incredible sycamore tree in the center. There are hundreds of shrub roses, each with a short and often poignant message provided by its patron ("Mom, we miss you every day"). In the warmer months, the park doesn't close until 10 p.m. Take advantage of that, perhaps with beer in hand.
22. Beers and pork knuckles in the Prater (location): Even if ferris wheels and noisy amusement parks don't get you fired up, there are valid reasons to visit the Prater in good weather. This enormous public park is home to the Schweizerhaus, for example, an oversized and perennially busy beer garden famous for its Czech Budweiser, crispy pork knuckles, poppy seeds dumplings, and other local favorites. (Here, more Prater recommendations from a local.)
#23. Visit the Habsburg Imperial Crypt (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day; €13 admission): More than 150 members of the Habsburg dynasty, including 12 emperors, are buried in the imperial crypt in downtown Vienna. The burial chamber is located below the church of the Capuchin monks and opens with the vaults of Emperor Matthias and his wife, Anna, who founded the place in 1618. There are fascinating details to observe, such as the evolution of tomb styles.
The unbridled monument of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis, rivals the grand papal tombs of Rome. Conversely, the enlightened emperors, such as Joseph II, rest in sober, Neoclassical style. The tomb of Queen Sisi, who was fond of the Hungarians, is usually laid with Hungarian flags. Here is poor Maximilian, too, who had a tragic misadventure in Mexico. The Habsburg was the most traditionalist, Catholic dynasty in Europe, which is why it’s a challenge, amusingly, to find a woman whose name did not include Maria.
24. Watch The Third Man at the Burg Kino (location): Based on a Graham Greene script, The Third Man (1949) features post-WWII Vienna under the joint British, French, Soviet, and American occupation. The movie delivers quotable lines by the black-market hustler Harry Lime, played memorably by Orson Welles, but it's also a shocking visual portal into the war-ravaged city. Pristine Vienna reduced to so much rubble by American bomber jets and Soviet troops? You're bound to wonder. The Third Man plays every Tuesday at the charming Burg Kino movie theater (in English, with German subtitles).
25. Relax in Vienna's City Park (location): The Ringstraße is known for its elaborate buildings but Vienna’s beautiful City Park too owes its existence to this ambitious building program in the 1860s. Artificial lakes, playgrounds, and picturesque open vistas were meticulously designed to enclose the slender Vienna River that flows through it. There are many statues of painters (Amerling, Makart, Schindler) and composers (Schubert, Brückner, Lehár), but most famous of all is the gilded bronze memorial to Johann Strauss (Son). The longstanding fine dining restaurant, Steirereck, occupies what used to be the park’s milk hall.
26. Swim in the Danube (location): Wish to cool yourself in the summer heat? Plunge into the blue Danube, which isn’t so blue but it flows through northern Vienna. Plenty of beaches (Strand) line the Alte Donau, formerly the main branch but now a still body of water. The more free spirited might want to find an inviting patch of green within the untamed Danube Island. Either way, they’re less than fifteen minutes away from the city center by the U1 subway.
27. Visit a Heuriger: Wines may not be the first thing you conjure up about Vienna, but the Austrian capital is one of the few metropolises in the world with sizable vineyards – 650 hectares or 1,600 acres – right within its city limits. This is thanks to the Christian Socialist mayor Karl Lueger, whose progressive building ban of 1905 protected the vineyards (he’s the same Karl Lueger whose statue on Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Platz has been defaced by protestors because of his rabid antisemitism).
In the outdoor season, one can taste the wines at the Heurigers, unpretentious wine taverns, some of them high up on the hillside. Gemischter Satz is the local specialty, made from different grape types (Grüner Veltliner, Riesling, Weissburgunder) that were grown and harvested together.
28. Experience Vienna's new-wave coffee culture: Vienna’s traditional coffeehouse culture is alive and well, see above, but the city isn’t immune to global trends. New-wave coffee shops are rapidly increasing in number, exhibiting the typical trappings of such establishments: light-roasted coffee beans, sleek minimalist interiors, fashionable baristas sporting tattoos and a mustache. It can be fun to compare and contrast old and new.
29. Enjoy Vienna's ethnic diversity at the Viktor-Adler Market (location): The stable post-WWII political climate and the skyrocketing economy have made Vienna a desirable destination for immigrants. People migrated from Turkey and Yugoslavia in the 1970s, from Poland, Romania, Hungary, Croatia since the early 2000s, and refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine more recently. There’s also a big contingent of German students and even Jewish people re-appeared with the arrival of a few thousand ultra-orthodox Hasidim.
The result is that Vienna is becoming a mini "New York City of Europe." Nearly half of Viennese residents were born outside of Austria and the city’s population grew by almost half a million people in the past two decades. But this ethnic diversity isn't visible in downtown (District 1); head to the Viktor Adler market in District 10 where Yemeni cafes, Turkish köfte vendors, Hungarian kolbász stands, Bulgarian grocery stores, and Afghani spice retailers share the lively premises alongside sellers of fruits and vegetables. Grab a lahmacun – flatbread topped with minced meat, veggies, and spices – and tea at Aliman, a wine spritzer at Prokes bar, and a döner at Ferhat on nearby Favoritenstraße, the center of the neighborhood.
30. Visit Thaliastraße and Brunnenmarkt (location): Vienna visitors rarely make it past the Gürtel, an unofficial dividing line between inner and outer city. True, most of that area is sleepy and residential. But not all of it! Take the busy Thaliastraße, the beating heart of District 16 also known as Ottakring. Traditionally a working class neighborhood, Ottakring has since the 1970s been layered with sizable Serbian and Turkish populations. This shifting residential makeup is reflected in Thaliastraße’s commercial offerings which now include excellent burek vendors and Turkish tea shops. The Ottakring brewery has also survived, which is why the nearby streets smell of spent brewing grain (there’s a bar inside the brewery). It is at Thaliastraße that the long row of produce vendors of Brunnenmarkt sets off.
31. Visit the fancy-pants farmers' market at Karmelitermarkt (location): The inner part of Leopoldstadt in District 2, near the city center, is known to be rapidly gentrifying; the upscale farmers' market on Karmelitermarkt embodies the neighborhood's transformation from its post-war working-class origins (before the Holocaust, much of Vienna's Jewish community lived in Leopoldstadt).
Every Saturday morning, an army of artisan vendors camp out here, including bread, cheese, and honey producers, high-end butchers, makers of fruit juices and preserves, bio vegetable farmers, and winemakers. Compared with the Viktor-Adler Market, above, things are more polished and pricey here. (Speaking of Viennese markets, most famous is the Naschmarkt, which I find overpriced and overtouristed.)
32. Go to a sausage shop: Sausage shops are essential to Central European food culture as a trip to Vienna can quickly manifest. 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!
These low-priced establishments are open until the wee hours and often most frequented well past midnight. Here, a few of my favorites.
33. Read up on Vienna before your trip: Whether it's juicy gossip about the family that ruled the city for more than six hundred years, a haunting novel about the twilight years of Austria-Hungary, or a book about the toxic Viennese intellectual climate that shaped the young Adolf Hitler – a bit of prep reading can make a trip more meaningful and provide additional context.
34. Grab a drink at a local bar: One of the best ways to gauge a city and its people? Visit a local bar (or supermarket)! Vienna offers plenty of inviting drinking joints. Many are located outside the historic city center (District 1) – most Viennese don’t live there – but easily accessible on foot or by public transport.
35. Appreciate Vienna’s social housing system (location): Eighty percent of Vienna's two million residents qualify for social housing, and sixty percent of residents live in some kind of rent-controlled apartments. The city of Vienna is one of the largest real estate managers in the world. Vienna’s best-known public housing blocks date to the Red Vienna period of the 1920s and 1930s, such as the vast Karl Marx Hof, but there are plenty of recent examples.
The city has 220,000 municipal apartments (Gemeindewohnung) as well as 200,000 subsidized flats (Geförderte Wohnung), both with deeply discounted rents. Above is an example of each. Located in Vienna's District 12, the apartment complex on the left contains 105 high-comfort municipal flats with a roof deck and a communal garden. The subsidized apartment building on the right comes with 142 units complete with outsize balconies and a green facade.
36. Visit Aspern Seestadt, a new city within the city (location): Not visible from the city center, but parts of Vienna have completely transformed in recent 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. Examples include the Nordbahnviertel and the Sonnwendviertel. 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 (there will be units for up to 25,000). The extended U2 subway line connects the neighborhood to downtown Vienna, reachable in twenty minutes. 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.
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