Vienna is Special! (A City Guide)

view of the Hofburg and the last standing city gate from Heldenplatz

When somebody asks me for tips on visiting somewhere I’ve been to, I type out a two-hundred-word text message, complete with emojis. It takes me maybe ten minutes. But if somebody asks for advice on visiting Athens, Copenhagen, or Tallinn, I just send them a link to one of my charmingly anecdote-peppered city guides hehe. Saves me ten minutes. They get more information. I get one more view recorded on that page of my blog. Win-win-win.

So, I thought, I should write more city guides! I’ve certainly got the time right now. And, after Copenhagen, Vienna is the foreign city I’ve spent the most time in and I consider it my spiritual home. In a past life, I was most certainly Viennese.

Vienna is special. It’s clean, orderly, and punctual, but it’s also beautiful, painted with frescoes, decorated with baroque statues, criss-crossed by cobblestoned streets and dotted with parks and courtyards. It’s a city where the average person can dance a half-decent waltz and knows the difference between Johann Strauss and Richard Strauss. It’s cheaper than Paris and London (although it’s not what I’d call cheap) but it’s still international ; you’ll Turkish and Farsi and Chinese alongside German, English, and French.

I was in Vienna in November, when the air was cold but the sun was still out and the leaves in all of the gardens were turning golden. The Christmas markets were popping up and lights and decorations were appearing all over the city, but the holiday tourists hadn’t yet arrived. It was perfect, and I loved it.

Say you go to Vienna, a very good idea. What should you do?

Taking a free walking tour is always a good start, just remember to bring €10-€15 per person to tip your guide. I took the “Hitler and the New Vienna” tour from Prime Tours and learned a lot. You can also visit freetour.com to pick a tour for yourself.

The best thing to do in Vienna is just to walk! Especially in the Inner City, inside the Ring Road, which used to be the city’s perimeter wall before Empress Maria Theresa knocked it down. You’ll see lots of grand-looking buildings along the Ring Road that were built to fill the empty space left by the wall. Most of these buildings (like the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Parliament) look like they’re made of marble, but they’re actually mostly painted brick. Not enough money for marble!

If you wander in the Inner City long enough, you’ll find yourself in or near Hofburg Palace, the old Habsburg palace that now hosts a number of museums, government offices, and apartments. The Hofburg is actually bigger than Buckingham Palace, but because it’s so integrated with the city, you can’t tell.  

St. Stephen's Cathedral at dusk

Make sure to stop by St. Stephen’s Cathedral (you can’t really miss it, Stephansplatz is right in the middle of the Inner City). You can pay €5.50 (cash only) to climb the 343 steps to the top of the South Tower for a nice view of Vienna. The windows are the top aren’t very big, but if you have some extra time and don’t mind the climb, it’s a good thing to do. Going into the main nave of St. Stephen’s is free. My brother, who is Catholic, also attended a German-language mass.

You can also see the Votivkirche if you head towards the University of Vienna, a church that looks like it was made of finely carved pale marzipan.

The main building of the university is open to the public, and you can spend a few minutes walking around. I got a tour while I was on a Tinder date (funnily enough, he was a fantastic tour guide, I learned a lot).

Green Spaces

The Burggarten (Palace Garden) is my favorite park in Vienna and is nestled between the Albertina Museum and the Ring Road. It’s small, lined with benches, and is home to a statue of the mustachioed Emperor Franz Joseph and to the much grander white-marble Mozart memorial. Mozart wasn’t born in Vienna, but he spent most of his life there, preferring it to his more provincial hometown of Salzburg. The Stadtpark is also quite nice, a little outside the city center, and much bigger than the Burggarten.

If you hop on the U-Bahn or the tram, there are a couple of other places that are cool to visit. Vienna’s Central Cemetary (Wiener Zentralfriedhof) is one of the largest in the world and you can visit the graves of so many composers: Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Salieri, Schoenberg, and the two Johann Strausses. If you’re a musician, might I recommend bringing a bouquet of flowers to leave as an offering for your favorite composer? To say thank you, but also, you know, so he can help you with your technique. I wish I'd left some roses for Brahms, just as a thank-you for the first movement of his violin concerto, which I have zero hope of ever being able to play, even with supernatural intercession.

Beethoven's grave, with many flowers from adoring fans

You can also take the U1 (the red U-Bahn line) northeast to Praterstern station to visit the Prater, a large green park next to the Danube that’s home to a Ferris wheel called the Riesenrad. I didn’t ride the Ferris wheel, but I went for a run in the park. Near Praterstern is also a nice place to stay; I spent the month in a cheap studio apartment at The Social Hub, a student dorm/hotel. This area is a little cheaper and quieter than the Inner City but everything is easily accessible via the U1, and trains to the airport run to and from Praterstern station. There’s also a large Billa (a chain grocery store) inside the station that’s one of the only grocery stores open on Sundays.

If you like hiking, you can take public transit out to Kahlenberg and follow the marked signs along the Danube before hiking up the mountain. My friend Annie recommended this to me—it’s quite steep, but the view at the top is absolutely stunning.

view from Kahlenberg

Music

While you’re in Vienna, you should also go to some kind of performance! Whatever floats your boat: the opera, the symphony, the ballet, a church choir, an outdoor concert. If you want, you could even buy (overpriced) tickets from those men in period costume outside the opera and St. Stephen's—it’s up to you! Check the websites for the Volksoper Wien, the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Vienna State Opera, and the Musikverein (Vienna Music Society). The Vienna State Opera is one of the great opera houses of the world; Pavarotti made his debut there in 1963. And the Musikverein has a beautiful gilded gold interior that you can stare at while you listen to the very Viennese Mahler.

inside the Musikverein

You can typically find cheap stehplatz tickets for less than €15 (except maybe for the opera). Note: stehplatz means that you will be standing the whole performance. If you do get a stehplatz ticket, you should get there as early as you can to claim a good spot along the railing! Otherwise, you might be stuck in the back with nothing to lean against except the wall. Which is not a bad experience either, this happened to me a few times and I just rolled with it.

the Vienna State Opera

Museums

The Albertina, an art museum named after the royal Habsburg couple Albert and Christina, is in my opinion the best museum in Vienna. General admission is €19.90, on the pricier side (this is true for museums in Vienna in general), but if you’re under 26 or over 65, you only pay €15.90, and kids under 19 get in for free. If you go to one museum in Vienna, make it this one. Why do I like it so much? It’s not too big, so you can see it all in an afternoon without getting overwhelmed, and it has a nice mix of central and southern European art. When I was there, they had a great exhibit on Michelangelo’s influence on other European artists’ depiction of the human form.  

a pissed-off rabbit by Albrecht Dürer, in the Albertina

The Leopold Museum is another great option to learn a lot about turn-of-the-century Viennese artists like Klimt, Schiele, and others. Some of this art is a little…weird…but I came away knowing so much more about Vienna’s pre-war golden age and I’d recommend if you are an art or history lover. Regular admission is €17, reduced price (for people under 26 or over 65) is €14, and kids under 19 get in free.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum) is Vienna’s answer to the Louvre or the Met. It is probably the priciest of all museums (€21 regular admission, €18 reduced) but it’s by far the biggest and has everything from Egyptian sarcophagi and Roman statues to painting by Rubens and Raphael. If you are a fan of Northern European renaissance paintings, this museum is a must-see; it’s home to the world’s largest collection of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. If you don't really care about Dutch renaissance masters AND you've already been to either the Louvre or the Met, you have my blessing to skip it.

the gardens outside the Upper Belvedere

The Belvedere is probably the most well-known museum in Vienna—actually three museums that you have to buy separate tickets for—but the Upper Belvedere is the most famous, situated in the old summer palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy, surrounded by beautiful French-style gardens, and home to Gustav Klimt’s painting “The Kiss.” If you want to reenact “The Kiss” with your partner (or a stranger, I guess?) in front of the painting itself or if you’re an architecture enthusiast, I’d recommend the Upper Belvedere, but otherwise I think it’s okay to skip. The gardens are free to enter, however, so take a stroll through them! I didn’t visit the Lower Belvedere or the Belvedere Modern.

You can take the U4 to Schönbrunn Palace, the Habsburgs' old summer palace complex, and purchase a ticket for a tour if you’re interested in seeing how the ultra-rich Habsburgs used to live. You have to do the tour, they don't want you wandering willy-nilly and getting dirt on 400-year-old tapestries! It’s a little expensive, but it does provide a lot of color for your mental picture of Viennese history. After all, we have the Habsburgs to thank for making Vienna the beautiful place that it is! The extensive gardens are free to enter and explore.

Getting Around

The U-Bahn, buses, and trams are easy, clean, and pretty cheap. They operate on the honor system (you don’t have to scan a ticket to enter the stations or get on a tram or bus), but staff will randomly ask for your ticket and if you are using a single-trip paper ticket, it must be validated. Otherwise you will be fined over €100, probably by a stout, intimidating Austrian woman yelling at you in German. This happened to a dude I was with. Ticket checks are much more common on trams than on buses or the U-Bahn, but they still happen. My ticket was checked three times in the month I was there, and I never had any issues; I had bought a month-long pass on the WienerLinen app that was just a QR code on my phone. But if you like to live dangerously, don't buy a ticket! Play German roulette! It's your money!

If you’re arriving to Vienna via plane, take the S-Bahn (regional train) into the city instead of a taxi. There is a train station just under the arrivals hall, and you can buy a ticket in the station.

down into the U-Bahn station!

Almost everywhere takes card, but it’s always good to have around €20 in cash handy, just in case. And Vienna is also extremely safe, especially in all the areas I’ve just described.  

If you want all the facts without the (entertaining, in my opinion) fluff, here is a much more concise "Charlsie’s Guide to Vienna." I’ve bolded the things that are, in my opinion, must-sees.

Things to See (free)

St. Stephen’s Cathedral (Stephensdom)

University of Vienna

Rathaus (City Hall)

Heldenplatz (the best view of the Hofburg)

Votivkirche

Things to Do

Climb the South Tower at St. Stephen’s

See a classical music performance

Have coffee in a traditional Viennese coffeehouse (try Café Eiles by the Rathaus)

Get a slice of cake from the best patisserie in Vienna, Gerstner K.u.K. Hofzuckerbäker

Walk around the Naschmarkt and get yelled at by all the vendors

Take a free walking tour

Museums to Visit

Albertina Museum

Leopold Museum

Kunsthistorisches Museum

The Belvedere (Upper, Lower, and Modern)

Schönbrunn Palace

Green Spaces

Burggarten

Stadtpark

Prater

Kahlenberg

Schönbrunn Gardens

Food and drink you should try (all pretty cheap!)

Sausage that you bought from a street vendor (if you eat meat, which I do not)

Wienerschnitzel (which, again, I do not eat)

Mohnzelten (a sweetly shelf-stable treat that is my favorite thing ever; it's dough stuffed with poppy seed-almond-rum filling)

Blaufränkish (Austrian red wine; buy a bottle at Billa)

Apple strudel and Sachertorte are overrated; try Topfenstrudel (like a cheesecake strudel) and Esterhazytorte instead

Topfengolatshe (a pouch made of flaky dough stuffed with barely-sweet cheesecake. Get this at Anker, NOT Ströck. You’ll see Ankers and Ströcks on nearly every street corner, sometimes next to each other, but I think Anker is the superior bakery chain)

Best Coffee Places

Jonas Reindl Coffee Roasters (multiple locations)

No Panic Coffee (two locations)

Vogel Coffee Roasters (near Praterstern; it was right next to my hotel so I went here all the time)