Vienna

Austria Vitor
City InfoItinerariesThings to doRestaurantsHotelsDay Trips

79 amazing things to do in Vienna

Every guide to Vienna opens with the same landmarks, and the big ones do earn their spot. But these 79 are the places I'd actually walk you to: the icons worth your time, plus the quiet corners and viewpoints that never make the lists.

Skip the lineSt. Stephen's Cathedral€29Vienna's soul: the great Gothic cathedral with its tiled zigzag roof right in the dead centre of the city. Directions
Skip the lineHofburg€23The Habsburgs' winter palace: 600 years of emperors ruled an empire from here. Directions
Skip the lineBelvedere Palace★ 4.6 · €23A baroque dream palace with formal gardens, and home to Klimt's 'The Kiss', the golden painting everyone comes for. Directions
Get TicketsVivaldi Four Seasons – Karlskirche€38Vivaldi's Four Seasons on period instruments inside the Baroque Karlskirche. Directions
Skip the lineVienna State Opera€15 tour / €20+ standingOne of the world's great opera houses: gilded, red-velvet, impossibly grand. Directions
Skip the linePrater & the Giant Ferris WheelPark free / wheel €14★ Tip: the Prater itself is free and gorgeous for a walk or bike ride; you only pay if you actually ride the wheel. Directions
Skip the lineKunsthistorisches Museum Wien★ 4.6 · €22Two mirror-image palaces facing each other across Maria-Theresien-Platz: the Kunsthistorisches (art, Bruegel, Vermeer, Caravaggio) and the Naturhistorisches (natural history). Directions
Get TicketsClassic Ensemble – St. Peter's Church€39Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Schubert in the candlelit vaults of Baroque St Peter's. Directions
NaschmarktFree to browseVienna's legendary open-air market: spices, cheeses, olives, falafel and buzzing little restaurants stretching for half a kilometre. Directions
Skip the lineAlbertina Museum€19.90★ Tip: the Habsburg State Rooms are included and often empty: don't rush past them to the modern galleries. Directions
Austrian ParliamentA Greek temple dropped onto the Ringstrasse, fronted by the towering Pallas Athena fountain. Directions
Get TicketsClassical Concert – Musikverein★ 4.6 · €15Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Vivaldi in the Musikverein's gilded halls: the world's most famous concert address, from €15. Directions
Skip the lineMuseumsQuartier & Leopold Museum★ 4.6 · €19 · 2-3 hoursFormer imperial stables now hold one of Europe's densest culture campuses: the Leopold with the world's largest Schiele collection, mumok's dark basalt cube of modern art, and Kunsthalle Wien. Directions
Austrian National Library — State Hall€8★ Tip: it's a 30-minute stop by the Hofburg: go first thing for golden window-light and the hall almost to yourself. Directions
Skip the lineKarlskirche★ 4.4 · €10A jaw-dropping baroque church with a green dome and two giant columns out front, reflected in a long pool. Directions
Get TicketsMozart Concert – Golden Hall€69The Vienna Mozart Orchestra in period costume: Mozart and Strauss with opera soloists. Directions
Skip the lineSpanish Riding School★ 4.7 · €16–€185★ Tip: the morning-exercise tickets cost a fraction of the gala show and are just as magical, perfect for the day you're already at the Hofburg. Directions
Get TicketsSisi Museum★ 4.8 · Free / €20 Sisi MuseumStep through Michaelerplatz into the world of Empress Elisabeth, 'Sisi', Austria's tragic, beloved royal. Directions
Skip the lineImperial Treasury Vienna★ 4.3 · €34The Habsburg crown jewels, deep inside the Hofburg: the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire, a narwhal tusk once thought to be a unicorn horn, and Napoleon's son's cradle. Directions
Get TicketsConcert – Mozart's First House€59An intimate concert in the very rooms where Mozart lived and composed. Directions
HundertwasserhausFree (exterior)★ Tip: skip the touristy 'village' shop opposite; the nearby KunstHausWien museum tells the full Hundertwasser story and is far better. Directions
Gloriette SchönbrunnFree (hill) / €5 viewing deckThe grand arcaded monument crowning the Schönbrunn hill: built purely to look beautiful and frame the view. Directions
Skip the lineMuseum of Natural History Vienna★ 4.8 · €18The twin of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, facing it across Maria-Theresien-Platz in a mirror-image palace. Directions
Get TicketsConcert – St. Stephen's Cathedral€15A classical concert under the Gothic vaults where Mozart and Haydn once played. Directions
Vienna City HallFree (exterior/courtyard)Vienna's neo-Gothic city hall looks like a fairytale cathedral: spires, arcades and a huge square out front that hosts markets and an ice rink in winter, films in summer. Directions
Skip the lineKaisergruft (Imperial Crypt)★ 4.5 · €15 · 45 minBeneath the modest Capuchin church rest around 150 Habsburgs in increasingly theatrical tin and bronze. Directions
Peterskirche★ 4.7 · Free · 30 minSqueezed into a cramped square just off the Graben, Hildebrandt's 1733 oval church erupts inside with gold stucco and a Rottmayr dome fresco. Directions
Get TicketsConcert – St. Anne's Church★ 4.6 · €27An intimate string-ensemble concert on period instruments in golden Baroque Annakirche. Directions
VolksgartenA public rose garden laid out inside the old city fortifications, with over 3,000 rose bushes around a neoclassical temple modelled on the one in Athens. Directions
Secession€13The white temple of Vienna's art revolution, topped with a golden filigree dome locals call 'the golden cabbage'. Directions
Skip the lineMozarthaus Vienna★ 4.2 · €16The only surviving Vienna apartment of Mozart, where he lived from 1784 and wrote The Marriage of Figaro. Directions
Get TicketsConcert – Eschenbach Palace€44The Vienna Supreme Orchestra with opera vocals, ballet and a wink of humour in a palace hall. Directions
BurgtheaterThe most important German-language theatre in the world and one of the grandest buildings on the Ring. Directions
Votive ChurchA soaring neo-Gothic church raised to give thanks after a failed 1853 assassination of Emperor Franz Joseph. Directions
Skip the lineSchönbrunn Zoo★ 4.8 · €29The oldest zoo in the world (1752), built as the emperor's private menagerie, and home to giant pandas. Directions
Get TicketsJohann Strauss Dinner Show – Prater€74A 3-hour dinner show: 20-piece orchestra, soprano and ballet with a four-course Viennese menu. Directions
Palmenhaus & Schmetterlingshaus★ 4.3 · Butterfly house €9.50, brasserie a la carte · 1 hourPalm fronds brush the curved glass of Friedrich Ohmann's 1906 Jugendstil greenhouse on the edge of the Burggarten. Directions
Palm House€9 · 1 hrThe glorious Palm House: a soaring Victorian iron-and-glass greenhouse on the Schönbrunn grounds, full of tropical plants under a 28-metre dome. Directions
Museum of Applied ArtsKnown to everyone as the MAK, Vienna's museum of design and decorative arts runs from Klimt's Stoclet Frieze studies to Thonet's bentwood chairs and Wiener Werkstatte silver. Directions
Get TicketsSwarovski House Tour€16A guided tour of the crystal flagship's art installations, ending with champagne and a gift. Directions
Zentralfriedhof★ 4.6 · Free · 2 hoursThree million people rest here, more than live in Vienna, across 2.4 square kilometers threaded with tree-lined avenues and roaming roe deer. Directions
Skip the lineDonauturm★ 4.5 · €18At 252 metres the tallest structure in Austria, rising straight out of the Donaupark. Directions
Kahlenberg★ 4.6 · Free · 1-2 hoursRide bus 38A up through the Grinzing vineyards to this 484-meter summit at the edge of the Vienna Woods. Directions
Get TicketsSpanish Riding School Training€17Watch the white Lipizzaner stallions at morning exercise in the Baroque Winter Riding Academy. Directions
University of ViennaThe oldest university in the German-speaking world, founded in 1365. Directions
Wien Museum KarlsplatzThe city's own history museum, reopened in late 2023 after a full rebuild and now free to enter. Directions
Skip the lineWeltmuseum€16A world-class ethnographic museum, home of the Aztec feather headdress, the Penacho. Directions
Get TicketsGiant Ferris Wheel (Riesenrad)€15A ride on the world's oldest Ferris wheel, sweeping over the Prater and the skyline. Directions
Skip the lineSigmund Freud Museum★ 4.6 · €16The apartment where Freud lived and saw patients for 47 years, until he fled the Nazis in 1938. Directions
Karmelitermarkt★ 4.4 · Free · 1 hourCobblestones, an organic cheesemonger and old-school butcher stalls fill one small square in Leopoldstadt's former Jewish quarter. Directions
Brunnenmarkt & Yppenplatz★ 4.3 · Free · 1-1.5 hoursOttakring's daily street market stretches roughly a kilometer along Brunnengasse, the longest of its kind in Europe, all Turkish produce calls and Balkan grills. Directions
Get TicketsSisi's Amazing Journey VR€12A film-and-VR boat ride and flight through imperial Vienna, narrated by Empress Sisi. Directions
Augarten★ 4.5 · Free, porcelain museum €8 · 1 hourTwo hulking WWII flak towers loom, graffitied and immovable, over Vienna's oldest baroque garden, laid out in formal French style in 1712. Directions
Alte Donau★ 4.5 · Free, boats from €20/hour · 2-3 hoursAn oxbow arm of the Danube, sealed off in 1875, now serves as Vienna's summer lake: 1.6 square kilometers of swimmable green water ringed by boathouses and century-old bathing clubs. Directions
DonauparkA big calm green park laid out for a 1964 garden show, spread between UNO City and the Old Danube. Directions
Get TicketsAustrian Food Tour★ 4.8 · €94A walking food tour sampling pretzels, sausage, schnitzel, goulash and Kaiserschmarrn. Directions
Setagayapark★ 4.6 · Free · 45 minA gift from Tokyo's Setagaya ward, this pocket Japanese garden in Döbling folds koi ponds, stone lanterns and a teahouse into 4,000 square meters. Directions
Neptune FountainFreeBehind the palace, the vast formal gardens climb the hill to the dramatic Neptune Fountain: sea gods and rearing horses in white stone. Directions
Skip the lineHaus des Meeres★ 4.6 · €24Vienna's aquarium and zoo climbs eleven floors inside a converted WWII flak tower, home to over 10,000 animals from sharks and rays to a tropical house of free-flying birds. Directions
Get TicketsCapuchins Crypt Tour★ 4.6 · €21A guided walk through the Habsburg burial crypt beneath the Capuchin church, with the stories of Maria Theresa, Franz Josef and Sisi. Directions
Kirche am Steinhof★ 4.7 · €5 · 1 hourOtto Wagner's 1907 golden-domed church crowns the hill of a still-working hospital campus in the western woods, the high altar of Art Nouveau sacred architecture. Directions
Wotruba Church★ 4.6 · Free · 30-45 minOne hundred fifty-two raw concrete blocks, stacked as if by giants, form sculptor Fritz Wotruba's 1976 brutalist church on a hilltop meadow in Mauer. Directions
Skip the lineNarrenturm★ 4.5 · €8 · 1-1.5 hoursLocals call it the Gugelhupf after the ring cake it resembles: Europe's oldest asylum building, a circular fortress from 1784 hidden in the old general hospital campus. Directions
Get TicketsCentral Cemetery Tour★ 4.9 · €23A guided walk to the graves of Beethoven, Strauss, Brahms and other greats in Vienna's vast Central Cemetery. Directions
UraniaOtto Wagner's riverside observatory from 1910, still crowned by its little green dome and public telescope. Directions
UN Vienna International CentreOne of only four UN headquarters cities in the world, this cluster of curved towers on the Danube's north bank is a small piece of international territory inside Vienna, nicknamed UNO City. Directions
Skip the lineSchönbrunn Palace★ 4.8 · €28–€38 (depending on tour)The Habsburgs' summer palace: 1,441 rooms of imperial gold, where Mozart played as a child and Sisi held court. Directions
Get TicketsClassic Car City Tour★ 4.5 · €35Sightseeing in an electric car styled after a 1920s classic, past the inner city, Hundertwasserhaus and the Prater. Directions
Get TicketsGerstner Baking Show★ 4.8 · €20A live apple strudel baking demonstration with tasting at the imperial court bakery. Directions
Get TicketsHop-On Hop-Off Bus★ 4.2 · €35Flexible sightseeing on double-decker buses across four routes, with commentary in 19 languages. Directions
Get TicketsKarlskirche Vivaldi Concert★ 4.7 · €38A period-instrument ensemble performing Vivaldi's Four Seasons inside the baroque Karlskirche, under its turquoise dome. Directions
Get TicketsSt. Peter's Church Concert★ 4.7 · €39An evening classical concert by the Classic Ensemble Vienna inside the baroque St. Directions
Get TicketsStrauss Dinner Show★ 4.6 · €74A Viennese dinner paired with live Strauss classics in a mirrored tent at the Prater. Directions
Get TicketsVienna Ghost Tour★ 4.9 · €30An evening walk through haunted alleys and landmarks with local ghost legends. Directions
Get TicketsVienna Pub Crawl★ 4.4 · €10A bar and club crawl with free drinks, games and challenges through Vienna's nightlife. Directions
Get TicketsVienna Underworld Tour★ 4.6 · €34An exploration of hidden basements and tunnels beneath the city, normally closed to the public. Directions
Get TicketsVintage Electro Car Tour★ 4.7 · €99A private small-group ride in a rebuilt electro-oldtimer, with optional sparkling wine. Directions
Get TicketsVotivkirche Light Show★ 4.8 · €22A 30-minute immersive light-and-sound show inspired by Genesis, projected across the neo-Gothic interior of the Votivkirche. Directions
Get TicketsWWII Walking Tour★ 4.8 · €27A historical walking tour covering Vienna's role during and after the Second World War. Directions