Austria
Vienna
Six centuries of imperial capital, still running on coffee houses, standing-room opera and its own wine.
Vienna ran an empire for six centuries and still looks like it: a ring boulevard of parliament buildings, museums and opera houses thrown up where the city walls were pulled down, and Schonbrunn out west, the Habsburgs' yellow summer palace with formal gardens climbing to a colonnade on the hill behind. St Stephen's Cathedral stands in the middle under a roof of patterned tile. What keeps it from reading as a museum is the everyday stuff: coffee houses that expect you to stay, standing places sold at the opera on the day, and vineyards inside the city limits on the northern hills.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
German
Currency
EUR
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Vienna
The Habsburg leftovers a summer palace, a winter palace and everything the family collected over six hundred years, all open and all within a tram ride
Coffee houses an institution rather than a cafe scene, with marble tables, newspapers on wooden racks and no pressure at all to leave
Music without ceremony an opera house that sells standing places on the day, and orchestras that play here as routine rather than as an occasion
Wine inside the city vineyards on the hills at the northern edge, and taverns that sell only their own young wine, under the trees in the warm months
Best time to visit
Apr-Oct
14-26° days
48.208° N, 16.372° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Vienna
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Weather & when to go to Vienna
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Vienna
December, January and February grade avoid and they earn it: grey, damp, often below freezing, and dark by mid-afternoon. December is also when the Christmas markets take over the squares and the concert calendar is at its fullest, which is a real reason to come and does not improve the weather one bit. High summer is warm and long in the evenings, but the palaces queue and the opera and the main orchestral season go dark through July and August. Late spring and early autumn dodge all of it.
Top things to do in Vienna
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Schonbrunn Palace and gardens
history 👍 PopularThe Habsburgs' summer palace west of the centre, with more than a thousand rooms, a handful of them shown on a fixed route, and gardens that are free to walk: parterres, a maze, a palm house and a long climb to the Gloriette colonnade for the view back down at the city. The palace zoo in the grounds is the oldest in the world.
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St Stephen's Cathedral
history 👍 PopularThe Gothic cathedral at the dead centre of the city, with a roof of glazed tiles laid in chevrons and a double-headed eagle, a south tower you climb by a spiral of stone steps, and catacombs below holding the Habsburg internal organs the family chose to bury separately.
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The Belvedere and Klimt's The Kiss
culture arts 👍 PopularTwo baroque palaces on a slope with a formal garden between them, built for a soldier-prince. The upper one holds the largest Klimt collection anywhere, including the gold painting everyone comes for, plus Schiele and Kokoschka in the rooms around it.
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The Viennese coffee house
food ⭐ Highly recommendedAn institution with rules: marble-topped tables, bentwood chairs, a waiter in black, a glass of water beside the cup, newspapers clamped in wooden holders, and the understanding that one coffee buys the table for as long as you want it. UNESCO lists the practice as intangible heritage. Half a dozen of the grand ones survive, along with plainer neighbourhood versions that are often better.
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Kunsthistorisches Museum
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedThe imperial art collection in a purpose-built palace on the ring, with the largest group of Bruegels in the world, Vermeer, Velazquez portraits of the Spanish Habsburg children, and a chamber of curiosities downstairs. The staircase and the domed cafe are part of the point.
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The Hofburg
historyThe winter palace, grown over centuries into a small city of courtyards that now holds the imperial apartments, the silver collection, the treasury with the crown of the Holy Roman Empire in it, and the riding school where the white stallions train.
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Vienna State Opera
nightlife musicA house on the ring that stages a different work almost every night of a season running from autumn to early summer. Standing places go on sale a few hours before each performance and the queue for them is the cheapest way into serious opera anywhere in Europe; guided tours run in the daytime.
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The Ringstrasse by tram
historyThe boulevard laid out on the demolished fortifications, lined in the space of thirty years with a parliament in Greek revival, a Gothic city hall, a Renaissance university and a pair of matching museums. Riding a scheduled tram around it costs a normal fare and shows you the lot.
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MuseumsQuartier and the Schiele collection
culture artsImperial stables converted into a courtyard of museums with coloured furniture strewn across it, where students sit all evening. One building holds the world's largest Schiele collection, another modern and contemporary work in a block of dark stone.
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The Prater and the giant wheel
scenicA former imperial hunting ground opened to the public in the 1760s: a funfair at one end with the 1897 ferris wheel turning slowly over it in wooden cabins, and behind that kilometres of flat wooded park with a dead-straight avenue of chestnuts down the middle.
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Zentralfriedhof
historyA cemetery bigger than the first district, out on the eastern edge, with a group of composers' graves in one section - Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, the Strauss family - and a memorial to Mozart, whose actual burial place is unknown. Deer and hares live in the quieter parts.
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Heuriger taverns on the northern hills
foodVienna grows wine inside its own boundary, and the growers are licensed to sell it at their own premises: a courtyard or garden, a board of cold cuts and spreads at the counter, a jug of young white, and a village atmosphere twenty minutes by tram from the ring.
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Naschmarkt and the Viennese table
foodA long market on a covered-over river with rows of produce, spice and cured fish stalls at one end and eating places at the other. The classic dishes to chase down elsewhere are veal schnitzel beaten thin and fried in butter, boiled beef with horseradish and apple, apple strudel, and the shredded sweet pancake served as a main course.
Best areas to stay in Vienna
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Innere Stadt
First-time visitors $$$Cathedral, palaces and opera on foot
Explore hotels in Innere Stadt →
Neubau and Spittelberg
Shops & restaurants $$Small shops, cobbled lanes, easy eating
Explore hotels in Neubau and Spittelberg →
Leopoldstadt
Parks & value $$Between the canal and the Prater park
Explore hotels in Leopoldstadt →
Wieden and Margareten
Longer stays $$Market streets, students, quiet side roads
Explore hotels in Wieden and Margareten →
Landstrasse
Quiet & central $$Belvedere gardens and embassy villas
Explore hotels in Landstrasse →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Vienna
Getting to & around Vienna
Getting there
Fly into Vienna airport, with a train into the city in about a quarter of an hour
Flight
Vienna International (VIE)
Eighteen km southeast of the centre at Schwechat. A nonstop airport train reaches the edge of the old town in about sixteen minutes, the ordinary suburban train takes a little longer to the same station and is the normal choice, and long-distance trains also call at the airport on their way to the main station. Buses and taxis cover the route in half an hour or so outside rush hour.
Train
Wien Hauptbahnhof
Fast trains from Salzburg take under three hours and from Innsbruck around four and a half, with direct services from Munich, Prague, Budapest, Zurich and Venice and one of Europe's widest night-train networks
Train
Wien Westbahnhof
The older terminus of the western line, still used by some services from Linz and Salzburg, on the ring's outer edge with a metro connection into the centre
Coach
The coach terminal at Erdberg
International and regional coaches, including very frequent runs to Bratislava and services across central and southeastern Europe
Ferry
The canal quay near Schwedenplatz
A fast boat runs up the Danube from Bratislava in the warmer months, taking longer than the train but arriving in the middle of town by water
Getting around
Walking
The first district is compact and largely pedestrianised, and most of the ring sights are twenty minutes apart at most
Free
U-Bahn
A small, very frequent metro covering the ring, the main station, the Prater and Schonbrunn, running all night at weekends
TBC
Tram
One of the largest networks in Europe; the ring lines double as a sightseeing loop past the parliament, the opera and the museums
TBC
Bus
Fills the gaps, with small electric buses threading the narrow streets inside the first district and night buses when the metro stops
TBC
City bikes
Flat ground, a bike-share system and separated lanes along the Danube canal and the long island in the river
TBC
Taxi & rideshare
Metered taxis and app cars are everywhere, though the transit network usually beats them across the centre
TBC
Day trips from Vienna
Wachau Valley
Full dayRiver valley & abbey
A bend of the Danube between Melk and Krems with terraced Gruner Veltliner vineyards on both banks, a vast baroque abbey on the cliff at one end, and the ruined castle above Durnstein where Richard the Lionheart was held for ransom. Boats run between the villages and a cycle path follows the water.
Getting there
train | car | ferry | tour
1 hr 15 min by train west
Bratislava
Full dayAnother capital
The closest pair of capital cities in Europe, an hour apart by train. Slovakia's is small enough to see in an afternoon: a white castle on the hill, a compact old town, communist-era housing across the river and noticeably cheaper eating.
Getting there
train | bus | ferry | car
1 hr by train east
Baden bei Wien
Half daySpa town
Sulphur springs the Romans used, a town centre rebuilt in early nineteenth-century style after a fire, a large public rose garden and the wooded hills of the Vienna Woods rising behind. An interurban tram runs there from the opera.
Getting there
train | car
45 min by tram or train south
Lake Neusiedl
Full daySteppe lake
A shallow, reed-fringed lake on the Hungarian border, warm in summer and consistently windy, ringed by a flat cycle path, wine villages and salt pans where storks nest on the chimneys.
Getting there
train | car | ferry
1 hr 15 min by train southeast
Semmering railway
Full dayMountain railway
The first railway built through high mountains, engineered in the 1850s with stone viaducts and curved tunnels and now a UNESCO site. A walking path shadows the line, so you can ride up and walk part of it back.
Getting there
train | car | walk
1 hr 30 min by train southwest
A little history of Vienna
Rome garrisoned a legionary camp called Vindobona on this stretch of the Danube, and the street plan of the first district still follows its outline. The Babenberg dukes made the town their seat in the twelfth century; the Habsburgs took it in 1278 and did not let go until 1918. Twice the Ottomans besieged it, in 1529 and again in 1683, and the breaking of the second siege by a relief army coming down off the Kahlenberg is the hinge of the city's look: the aristocracy that had been keeping its distance moved in and built the baroque palaces that still fill the inner districts.
The Congress of Vienna redrew Europe here in 1814 and 1815. In 1857 the walls came down and the Ringstrasse went up in their place, a whole city centre of public architecture built in thirty years. Around 1900 Vienna held one of the densest concentrations of new thinking anywhere - Freud, Klimt, Schiele, Mahler, Schoenberg, Loos, Wittgenstein - alongside the mass politics that also took shape here. The empire ended in 1918; the socialist city government of the 1920s built enormous municipal housing blocks that are still lived in; the annexation of 1938 destroyed one of Europe's largest Jewish communities. Four powers occupied the city until the State Treaty of 1955, and it has been a United Nations headquarters city since 1979.
Rome garrisons the camp of Vindobona, whose outline survives in the street plan
The Habsburgs take the city, and hold it until 1918
The second Ottoman siege is broken and the baroque rebuilding begins
The Congress of Vienna redraws Europe after Napoleon
The walls come down and the Ringstrasse is laid out in their place
Annexation by Nazi Germany; the Jewish community is driven out and murdered
The State Treaty ends ten years of four-power occupation
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+43
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
FAQs about Vienna
▸ How many days do you need in Vienna?
Three is the working minimum: one for the first district and the cathedral, one for Schonbrunn, one for the Belvedere and the Kunsthistorisches. A fourth buys the Prater, the cemetery, the wine hills or a day on the Danube.
▸ Is Vienna worth visiting in winter?
The record grades December through February avoid and that is fair - grey, damp, often below freezing, dark by mid-afternoon. It is also the Christmas market season and the fullest stretch of the opera and concert calendar, and almost everything worth doing here is indoors anyway. Come in winter for the music and the markets, not for the weather.
▸ How do you get into the opera without booking months ahead?
Standing places go on sale a few hours before each performance at a separate entrance, and the queue for them forms well before that. There is no dress code in standing, and you get the same performance the stalls get.
▸ Is Vienna expensive?
Dearer than Budapest or Prague, easier than Zurich, Paris or Copenhagen. Transit and neighbourhood eating are good value; the palaces and museums are where a visit adds up, so a combined museum pass is worth working out if you plan more than two.
▸ What is a Viennese coffee house actually like?
Slower than a cafe and less friendly on first acquaintance. You order a specific preparation rather than just a coffee, it arrives on a small metal tray with a glass of water, and nobody will hurry you along or bring the bill until you ask. Bringing a book is normal behaviour, not an eccentricity.
More in Austria
Graz
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✓ best Apr-Oct