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 gr...
Photograph · C.Stadler/Bwag · CC BY-SA 4.0
Reviewed by Elena Voss · Roavina Travel Editor
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.
Checked 2026-08-25
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.
80 places match
Category
Typical visit duration
Interests
Aquädukt Liesing
The Liesing Aqueduct, known locally as Aquädukt Liesing, is a historic water-bridge structure in Vienna’s twenty-third district, Liesing. It belongs to the city’s wider history of water-management and public engineering, showing how infrastructure can become part of an urban landscape.
Aquädukt Speising
Aquädukt Speising is a historic aqueduct in southern Vienna and a tangible example of municipal water engineering.
Holocaust-Mahnmal
The Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial is a sealed concrete sculpture by the British artist Rachel Whiteread, unveiled on 25 October 2000 on Judenplatz in the Innere Stadt.
Heldendenkmal der Roten Armee
The Soviet War Memorial on Schwarzenbergplatz commemorates the Red Army soldiers killed during the Vienna Offensive of April 1945, and was built and unveiled by Soviet authorities the same year, within months of the city's capture.
Wiener Gasometer
The Gasometers are four Victorian gas holders with flats inside them.
Karl-Marx-Hof
Karl-Marx-Hof is a block of council flats 1,100 m long, and it is one of the longest single residential buildings in the world.
The Pestsäule is a promise made by an emperor who had left town.
Stephansplatz is the square at the geographic and historic centre of Vienna, formed around St. Stephen's Cathedral and taking its name directly from it.
The Stadttempel is Vienna's main synagogue, and it survived 1938 because it is hidden.
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.
Schloss Wilhelminenberg sits on a wooded hill above Ottakring, Vienna's 16th district, built in the 1730s for Field Marshal Guido Starhemberg and later named for Archduchess Wilhelmine, who owned it in the nineteenth century.
Palais Schwarzenberg is a Baroque garden palace at the edge of the Belvedere district, begun for Count Heinrich Franz von Mansfeld-Fondi and continued after his death by the Schwarzenberg family, who gave it its present name.
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…
Schottenstift is a working Benedictine abbey on Freyung square in the Innere Stadt, founded in 1155 by Duke Henry II Jasomirgott.
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").
Palais Kinsky is a Baroque palace at Freyung 4 in Vienna's first district, built between 1713 and 1716 by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt for Count Philipp Vinzenz Daun, a Habsburg field marshal, and later passed by marriage to the Kinsky…
Palais Todesco is a Ringstrasse-era palace facing the Vienna State Opera across Kärntner Straße, built between 1861 and 1864 by Ludwig Förster and Theophil Hansen for the brothers Eduard and Hermann Todesco, Jewish bankers ennobled by Franz Joseph I as…
The Strudlhofstiege is a public outdoor Art Nouveau stairway in Alsergrund, connecting the upper street Strudlhofgasse to the lower Liechtensteinstrasse across a steep slope.
Schweizertor
The Hofburg is not a palace but a district of palaces, and the Austrian president works in it.
Wasserturm Favoriten
Palais Windischgrätz
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.
