Language · 11 published
Country guide
Austria is 83,879 km², and its nine states fall into two kinds of trip. Vienna, Lower Austria and Upper Austria lie along the Danube on level, easily crossed ground, with Vienna alone holding 1,931,593 of the country's roughly nine million people. Tyrol, Salzburg, Vorarlberg and Styria are the Alpine states, entered by valley rather than by plain, and their capitals — Innsbruck, Salzburg, Bregenz, Graz — are each small enough to cross on foot in an afternoon. The distinction decides an itinerary: the Danube cities sit an hour apart by train and the mountain ones do not.
Reviewed by Elena Voss · Roavina Travel Editor
Every city catalogued in this country so far, ranked by how much there is to see.
Photograph · Andrzej Otrębski · CC BY-SA 4.0
Ranked by importance — sitelinks, pageviews and heritage status, not editor preference.
30 places match
Category
Typical visit duration
Interests
Kunsthistorisches Museum is Vienna’s imperial art museum, built as a purpose-made home for the Habsburg collections on Maria-Theresien-Platz. Gottfried Semper and Karl von Hasenauer designed it between 1871 and 1891, and it opened in 1891.
Albertina is a museum in a former Habsburg palace above Albertinaplatz, immediately behind Vienna’s State Opera.
Naturhistorisches Museum
Vienna’s Natural History Museum is a purpose-built nineteenth-century house of science on Maria-Theresien-Platz, not merely a container for specimens.
The Leopold Museum houses the collection assembled over five decades by the ophthalmologist and collector Rudolf Leopold, sold to the Austrian state in 1994 and opened to the public in this purpose-built home inside the MuseumsQuartier in 2001.
Prunksaal der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek
The Austrian National Library's Prunksaal, the State Hall, is the Baroque core of the former imperial court library, built between 1723 and 1726 by Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach, son of the architect who designed the Karlskirche.
Secession
Vienna’s Secession Building is the purpose-built headquarters of an artist association that broke from established institutions in 1897. Joseph Maria Olbrich designed the white exhibition hall in 1897–98.
Kaiserliche Schatzkammer
The Imperial Treasury, the Kaiserliche Schatzkammer, holds the Habsburg dynasty's crown jewels and imperial regalia inside the Hofburg's Schweizerhof, the Swiss Courtyard at the historic core of the palace complex.
The Sigmund Freud Museum occupies the apartment and consulting rooms at Berggasse 19 in Alsergrund where Sigmund Freud lived and practised from 1891 until June 1938, when he fled Vienna for London after the Nazi annexation of Austria.
Museum für Angewandte Kunst
The MAK was the first museum of its kind on the continent, and it was founded to improve manufacturing.
Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
mumok — the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig — is Austria's largest museum of modern and contemporary art, and the darkest building on the MuseumsQuartier plaza by design.
Mozarthaus Vienna, at Domgasse 5 in the Innere Stadt, is the only one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Viennese residences still standing.
The Haus der Musik is a ticketed, interactive sound museum in the Palais Erzherzog Karl on Seilerstatte, a five-minute walk from the Vienna State Opera.
Weltmuseum
Weltmuseum Wien occupies the Neue Burg wing of the Hofburg on Heldenplatz and holds Vienna's global ethnographic collections, assembled from Habsburg holdings and expedition material going back to the museum's founding as the Museum für Völkerkunde in 1876.
Belvedere 21 is Vienna's museum for contemporary art, housed in a steel-and-glass pavilion in the Schweizergarten, a few hundred metres south of the Baroque Belvedere palace complex it is administratively part of.
The Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, the Museum of Military History, is Austria's oldest purpose-built museum structure, opened in 1891 inside the Arsenal complex as the k.k. Hofwaffenmuseum and renamed to its current form in 1955.
Technisches Museum
The Technisches Museum Wien is Austria's largest museum of technology and industry, on Mariahilfer Straße in the 14th district, Penzing.
The Architekturzentrum Wien, usually shortened to Az W, is Austria's centre for the exhibition and documentation of architecture, inside the MuseumsQuartier in the 7th district.
Wien Museum Karlsplatz
Wien Museum, on Karlsplatz, is Vienna's museum of its own history, tracing the city from the Roman camp of Vindobona through the medieval, Baroque and Ringstrasse periods to the twentieth century.
Künstlerhaus Wien
The Kunstlerhaus is Vienna's oldest surviving purpose-built exhibition hall for the fine arts, standing on Karlsplatz next to the Musikverein.
Winterpalais
The Winter Palace of Prince Eugene (Winterpalais des Prinzen Eugen) is a Baroque town palace at Himmelpfortgasse 8 in Vienna's first district, built between 1695 and 1724 as the city residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Habsburg field marshal…
Otto-Wagner-Kirche
Kirche am Steinhof is Otto Wagner's Art Nouveau church, built in 1904-1907 as the chapel of the Niederösterreichische Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt für Nerven- und Geisteskranke — the psychiatric hospital on the Steinhof hill, now the Klinik Penzing site — and…
Hermesvilla is a villa built 1882-1886 inside the Lainzer Tiergarten, the walled game reserve on Vienna's western edge, commissioned by Emperor Franz Joseph I as a retreat for Empress Elisabeth ("Sisi").
Globenmuseum
The Globe Museum, or Globenmuseum, is a specialist museum in Vienna devoted to globes and related cartographic instruments. Its collection brings geography, astronomy, craftsmanship, and the history of knowledge together in three-dimensional form.
Beethoven Museum
Unteres Belvedere
MUSA
MUSA is Wien Museum’s exhibition venue for contemporary art from Vienna, located beside City Hall in the Innere Stadt. Its changing presentations trace artistic developments in the city over recent decades and introduce less familiar positions alongside established work.
Source: OpenStreetMap contributors, Wikidata ·
Seven to ten days gives Vienna four days and leaves time for Salzburg, Innsbruck, or Graz by rail. Alpine excursions need flexible weather time and should not be treated as guaranteed additions to a tightly timed city route.
Austria follows Schengen entry rules, with document and visa requirements determined by nationality and route. Verify the current position through official Austrian or EU channels before departure.
ÖBB trains and coordinated buses link Vienna with Salzburg, Innsbruck, Graz, and other regions. Drivers need the correct motorway toll product, and some Alpine roads charge separately.
May to June and September suit many city-and-mountain routes, while December is a distinct winter-city period. Lift, pass, and high-road operating dates matter more than a national forecast for Alpine days.
Austria uses the euro (EUR). Cards are useful, but a euro cash reserve can help at smaller establishments; review the amount and currency before approving any terminal conversion.
Austria uses 112 as its general emergency line and 144 for ambulance dispatch. Its 230 V system takes Type C and F plugs. This guide holds no verified tap-water value, so leave that point unresolved until local guidance is checked.
