Vienna: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
In 1857 the emperor ordered the walls of Vienna pulled down and a sixty-metre boulevard built in a ring around the city. Every building on it was deliberately given a different period: the parliament Greek because democracy began there, the city hall Gothic like the free towns of Flanders, the theatre baroque. It is architecture as argument. Two hours.
A short history of Vienna
The Romans set up the military camp of Vindobona here on the Danube. In 1278 the House of Habsburg came to power, ruling from Vienna until 1918, and the city became the capital of a multinational empire. In 1529 and 1683 the Ottomans stood at its gates and were driven back. In 1814 and 1815 the congress that redrew the map of Europe met here. At the end of the 19th century Sigmund Freud and Theodor Herzl lived here; Herzl wrote "The Jewish State" in the city. Before 1938 about 185,000 Jews lived in Vienna. After the Anschluss in March 1938 most of them were deported or fled, and about 65,000 of Austria's Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
The ten best sights in Vienna
1StephansdomThe roof tiles are 230,000, and they were laid by hand twice
2HofburgEighteen wings, nineteen courtyards, and still the president’s office
3Schönbrunn1,441 rooms. The garden and the Gloriette walk are free
4BelvedereKlimt’s Kiss is here, and the queue is for one painting
5Kunsthistorisches MuseumThe Habsburg collection, and Bruegel’s whole room
6AlbertinaA million prints, and the Dürer hare is in the vault
7Leopold MuseumThe largest Schiele collection in the world
8SecessionA gilded dome the city calls the golden cabbage
9KarlskircheA lift takes you to the dome fresco, two metres from it
10Kapuzinergruft149 Habsburgs, and their hearts are in a different church
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Vienna →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Vienna:
Free walking tours in Vienna
The Ring
In 1857 the emperor ordered the walls of Vienna pulled down and a sixty-metre boulevard built in a ring around the city. Every building on it was deliberately given a different period: the parliament Greek because democracy began there, the city hall Gothic like the free towns of Flanders, the theatre baroque. It is architecture as argument. Two hours.
- Stephansdom · The roof carries two hundred and thirty thousand glazed tiles in a pattern of eagles, and it burned completely in April 1945 — not from bombing but from a fire in nearby shops that nobody put out. Every federal state paid for part of the rebuilding.
- Graben · The name means ditch, because that is what it was — the Roman defensive ditch of Vindobona, filled in around 1200 with the ransom money paid for Richard the Lionheart, who was captured on his way home from the crusade.
- Michaelerplatz · The hole in the middle is the Roman camp, excavated and left open. On one side of the square is the emperor’s gate; on the other is the Looshaus, a plain building with no ornament at all, which the emperor hated so much he kept those curtains shut for the rest of his life.
- Hofburg · Six hundred and forty years of Habsburgs, and every one of them built on. The result is eighteen wings with no plan, and the state still uses it: the president works in the Leopold wing, in the rooms the emperor used.
- Ringstrasse · Fifty-seven metres wide and five kilometres round, and the width was not only for show: the boulevard was laid out after the revolution of 1848 so that artillery could be moved quickly and barricades could not be built across it.
- Vienna State Opera · The critics called it a sunken box and one of the two architects killed himself; the other died of a stroke ten weeks later, and neither saw it open. Eighty standing tickets are sold for thirteen euros ninety minutes before every performance.
Nineteen Hundred
In the years before the First World War, Freud, Klimt, Schiele, Mahler, Wittgenstein and Herzl all lived in Vienna — and most of them met in the same coffee houses. It was a city where the empire was dying and the culture was flowering at exactly the same time. This walk follows that one year. Two hours.
- Secession · Nineteen artists resigned from the official artists’ society in 1897 and built this in six months. Above the door is their motto: to every age its art, to art its freedom. Vienna immediately named the gilded dome the golden cabbage.
- Karlskirche · The emperor vowed to build it if the plague of 1713 ended, and the two columns outside are Roman triumphal columns — on a church. A lift inside takes you up to the dome fresco, close enough to see the brush marks.
- Leopold Museum · Rudolf Leopold, an eye doctor, bought Schiele when nobody wanted him — in the 1950s a Schiele cost less than a month’s rent. He ended up with the largest collection in the world and sold it to the state for a fraction of its value.
- Belvedere · Klimt’s Kiss has hung here since 1908, when the state bought it before it was even finished. The gold is real gold leaf — his father was a gold engraver and taught him to beat it.
- Freud Museum · He lived and worked in this flat for forty-seven years and left in June 1938, after the Gestapo had already questioned his daughter. He took everything with him, including the couch, so the rooms are deliberately empty.
- Café Central · Trotsky played chess here daily. When an Austrian minister was told in 1917 that there might be a revolution in Russia, he is supposed to have said: and who will make it, Herr Trotsky from the Café Central?
Wine and the Hill
Vienna is the only capital in the world with commercial vineyards inside the city limits — seven hundred hectares of them. It also has a kind of tavern that exists nowhere else: the Heuriger, where a grower may sell his own wine directly, under a law from 1784. Two hours, mostly uphill.
- Naschmarkt · The market sits on top of the river Wien, which was covered over in 1900 — the whole kilometre and a half of stalls is a roof. On Saturday a flea market doubles its length, and the whole thing shuts on Sunday.
- Spittelberg · Two lanes of small Biedermeier houses that the city listed as slums in the 1970s and planned to clear. Residents and students occupied them, the plan was dropped, and they are now among the most expensive addresses in Vienna.
- Neubau · The seventh district was the textile quarter, and its streets are still named after the trades. The long straight streets running off Mariahilfer are now small shops and bars, and this is where Vienna under forty actually goes.
- Grinzing · A Heuriger may only sell wine the grower made himself, and only when a bunch of pine branches hangs over the door — that is the signal, and it has worked that way since Joseph the Second allowed it in 1784. The food is cold and sold by weight.
- Kahlenberg · On 12 September 1683 the relief army came down this hill into the Ottoman camp and broke a two-month siege in a single afternoon. The Polish king led the charge himself, and Europe’s eastern border was settled that day.
- Prater · Imperial hunting ground until 1766, when Joseph the Second opened it to everyone and was told it was improper to let commoners walk where the court walked. He replied that if he wanted to be only among equals he would have to spend his life in the crypt.
Getting to Vienna and getting around
- Vienna Airport · The ordinary S7 train is €4.40 and sixteen minutes slower
- Wien Hauptbahnhof · Night trains to Rome, Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw
- Westbahnhof · Trains west, and the cheap ones to Salzburg
- VIB bus terminal · Buses to Bratislava every hour, and it takes seventy minutes
Cheap eats in Vienna
Eight counters where Vienna eats standing. A sausage stand by the opera that serves until four in the morning to people in evening dress, a shop that has sold nothing but open sandwiches since 1902, and coffee houses where one cup buys the table for the afternoon — a right written into the city’s culture and recognised by UNESCO.
- Bitzinger Würstelstand · €5.50, until four in the morning, standing
- Trzesniewski · €1.80 each, and two is not enough
- Café Hawelka · Buchteln at ten at night, and cash only
- Café Sperl · 1880, billiard tables, and nobody will hurry you
- Café Prückel · The 1955 interior is listed, and the cake is cheaper
- Figlmüller · The schnitzel is wider than the plate. Two can share one
- Zum Schwarzen Kameel · Stand at the front counter, not in the restaurant behind
- Brunnenmarkt · The longest street market in Europe, and half the price
Museums in Vienna
- Kunsthistorisches Museum · €21, closed Mondays, and the Bruegel room is the point
- Belvedere · €17.50. The Kiss, and the garden between the two palaces
- Albertina · €19.90. Dürer’s hare comes out of the vault rarely
- Leopold Museum · €17. The largest Schiele collection anywhere
- Naturhistorisches Museum · €18, and the building mirrors the one opposite exactly
- Jewish Museum · €12 for both sites, and the excavation is the second
- Haus der Musik · €16, and you may conduct the Philharmonic yourself
Parks and gardens in Vienna
- Schönbrunn gardens · Free. Twenty minutes uphill to the Gloriette
- Prater · Free, open all night, and six kilometres of chestnut avenue
- Donauinsel · 21 km of artificial island, and you may swim anywhere
- Augarten · Free, and the towers are not open to anyone
- Zentralfriedhof · Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Strauss in one row
- Wienerwald · A thousand square kilometres of forest at the tram terminus
Things to do in Vienna with kids
- Tiergarten Schönbrunn · €28, and pandas born here, not borrowed
- Technisches Museum · Free under nineteen, and a working coal mine downstairs
- ZOOM Kindermuseum · Everything is touched. Book — it sells out
- Haus des Meeres · An aquarium inside a flak tower, with a roof terrace
- Prater · Pay per ride. Walking in costs nothing
- Schmetterlinghaus · A jugendstil glasshouse of live butterflies, €7
Live music in Vienna
- Musikverein · Standing tickets from €7, sold on the day
- Vienna State Opera · Eighty standing places at €13, ninety minutes before
- Konzerthaus · Four halls, and the small one is where the risks are taken
- Porgy and Bess · Jazz every night in a converted cinema, from €20
- Arena Wien · A squatted slaughterhouse since 1976, and still run that way
- WUK · A locomotive factory of workshops, concerts and a courtyard
Nightlife in Vienna
- Donaukanal · Bars on the water from May, and free to sit on the steps
- Neubau · The seventh district, and the whole evening is walkable
- Spittelberg · Two lanes, tables outside, and the Christmas market in December
- Loos American Bar · Twenty seats, no reservations, and open till four
- Flex · In a tunnel by the canal, and the sound system is the reason
- Grinzing · Wine from the grower, cold food by weight, from four
Frequently asked questions about Vienna
What is there to see in Vienna?
The top sights in Vienna are Stephansdom, Hofburg and Schönbrunn. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Vienna?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Vienna without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Vienna?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Vienna, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The Ring.
How do you get to Vienna and get around?
The main ways are Vienna Airport, Wien Hauptbahnhof and Westbahnhof. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Vienna, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Vienna that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Vienna for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.