A concert, a palace, and a day up the Danube.
Which hall the Vivaldi evening is actually in. Whether Schönbrunn needs the guided ticket or just the gardens. How much of a Hallstatt day is spent in the coach. Every bookable tour in Vienna, read and ranked.
Habsburg addresses, gilded concert halls, and cake at four.
A summer residence and a winter one, the churches that fill their own naves every night, the Klimt rooms across the garden at the Belvedere, and coffee houses that treat sitting still as a service. Almost every Vienna itinerary is assembled out of these.
Vienna sells a concert every night. They are not the same concert.
All 68 concert nights →
Church naves, a palace orangery and the two purpose-built halls, played mostly by chamber ensembles in period dress rather than by the resident orchestras. What changes is the room, the length of the programme and whether dinner is attached. These three carry the most travellers.
Karlskirche, St Peter’s and the Annakirche
Baroque interiors doing exactly what they were built to do. The sound is close, the ticket is the cheapest way into a Vienna evening, and the seat category decides how much of the ensemble you can actually see.
Dinner and a concert at Schönbrunn
The Orangery still runs evening concerts, and most tickets pair them with a three-course dinner and a walk through the state rooms once the day visitors have gone. It is the longest of the three evenings and the one that needs booking earliest.
A concert inside St Stephen’s
The cathedral runs its own evening programme under the nave vault. The acoustic is cavernous rather than precise, which suits the organ recitals and the choral nights far better than it suits a string quartet.
What Vienna actually books.
Every review →Ordered by how many travellers have been. The Vivaldi evening in the Karlskirche at the top of this list has carried more people than anything else on the site.
1
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Concert in Karlskirche
Hear Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at Vienna’s Karlskirche with Orchestra 1756 on period instruments. 75 minutes, allocated seats, $40.
From · $40
Read our review →
2
Skip-the-cashier-desk-line Giant Ferris Wheel Ride
from $17
3
Schönbrunn Palace & Gardens Skip-the-Line Tour
from $63
4
Light of Creation Votive Church Immersive Light Show
from $25
5
Vienna Spanish Riding School Guided Tour
from $28
6
Classical Concert in the World-Famous Musikverein
from $17
7
Skip-the-Line Sisi Museum, Hofburg and Gardens Tour
from $61
8
Hallstatt & Alpine Peaks Day Trip with Skywalk Lift
from $131
Three palaces, and how long each one really takes.
Schönbrunn is the summer residence and a half day minimum once the gardens are counted. The Hofburg is the winter one, in the middle of town, and splits into the Sisi apartments and the Imperial Treasury. The Belvedere is two buildings across a formal garden, and most people go for one painting.
All 42 Schönbrunn tours →
In Vienna the coffee house is the destination, not the stop.
Viennese coffee-house culture has been on Austria’s national register of intangible cultural heritage since 2011, which is a formal way of saying that nobody is going to move you on. The tours are the useful version of it: which houses still bake their own, what separates a Melange from an Einspänner, and where the Sachertorte argument is actually settled.
What a day in Vienna costs, from a concert ticket up.
Every published review sorted by what it actually charges. The cheap end of this city is unusually good.
Concert tickets, palace and museum entry, the Ferris wheel, and a guided walk around the old town.
Guided palace tours with the entry ticket included, food and coffee-house walks, and the shorter days out of the city.
The Hallstatt and Salzburg days, private drivers, and the dinner-and-concert evenings inside Schönbrunn.
One free day, and five directions out of Vienna.
All 50 Hallstatt day trips →Vienna sits closer to more day trips than anywhere else in the region: two foreign capitals down the same motorway, a UNESCO river valley an hour upstream, and the Salzkammergut lakes at the far end of a long one. What really separates them is how much of the day is spent in the coach.
Melk Abbey and the Wachau by boat
An hour upstream the Danube narrows into terraced vineyards and apricot orchards. Most days pair the abbey at Melk with a stretch on the water down towards Krems, and the water is the part people describe afterwards.
Hallstatt and the Salzkammergut lakes
Three and a half hours each way for a lake village of about seven hundred people, and it is still the most booked day out of the city. The lift up to the skywalk is the thing to check: some tickets include it, most do not.
Bratislava, by road or by boat
No two capitals in Europe sit closer together, and the fast boat down the Danube is a genuinely different way to arrive. Half a day is enough for the old town, which is why so many of these add a second stop.
Three things Vienna has that nowhere else does.
Palaces, galleries and cake exist all over Central Europe. Licensed horse cabs with their own ranks, a coffee house that expects you to stay, and a concert in the room where Mozart was made to compete do not.
The Fiaker
The two-horse cabs are a licensed Viennese trade rather than a costume. Drivers hold a city permit, the horses work to regulated hours and are taken off the street above a set temperature, and the cabs stand at fixed ranks on Stephansplatz, Albertinaplatz and Heldenplatz. The short ride covers the old town; the long one takes in the Ring.
- 130-Minute Fiaker Ride in the Old Town★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,092 reviews
- 2Secrets of the Fiaker & Horse-Drawn Carriage Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 743 reviews
- 3Culinary Horse-Drawn Carriage Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 291 reviews
The Coffee House
A Viennese coffee house sells you one coffee and the table for as long as you want it, with the newspapers on wooden racks and a glass of tap water arriving unasked. Austria put the culture on its national intangible-heritage register in 2011. The tours earn their price on the ordering alone: Melange, Verlängerter, Einspänner and Fiaker are four different drinks.
- 1Chocolate Workshop in Chocolate Museum w/ Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,802 reviews
- 2Gerstner KuK Hofzuckerbäcker Baking Show & Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 823 reviews
- 3Vienna Coffee, Cake & Pastries Tour with Local Stories★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 470 reviews
The Palace Concert
In February 1786 Joseph II staged a contest in the Orangery at Schönbrunn with Mozart at one end of the room and Salieri at the other. The Orangery still puts on evening concerts, and most tickets attach a dinner and an after-hours walk through the state rooms, which is the only time the palace is quiet.
- 1Mozart and Strauss Concert at Schönbrunn★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,364 reviews
- 2Exclusive Evening at Schönbrunn Palace: After-Hours Audiotour, Dinner, Concert★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 930 reviews
- 3Schönbrunn Palace Concerts in Vienna★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 889 reviews
Book these before you fly to Vienna.
Most of this city can wait until you are standing on the Graben with a coffee. These cannot. They run on timed entry, a performance calendar, and six weeks of Advent.
- 01Schönbrunn Palace & Gardens Skip-the-Line TourPalace entry is timed and dated. The middle of the day in summer goes first, and the guided tickets go with it.
- 02Vienna Spanish Riding School Guided TourThe Lipizzaners perform to a published season with dark weeks in between, and a performance ticket is a different thing from the morning training session.
- 03Classical Concert in the World-Famous MusikvereinEvery concert here is a single dated performance. There is no open ticket for “some night this week”, so the date has to be chosen before you travel.
- 04Christmas Markets TourThe markets run a fixed few weeks from mid-November to just after Christmas, and the tours built around them leave the calendar with them.
Rain is not a problem here. It is most of the itinerary.
The best rooms in this city all have roofs: the Kunsthistorisches, the Imperial Treasury, the Sisi apartments, the naves that double as concert halls, and a coffee house on every second corner. About the only things weather really touches are the Wachau boat and the gardens at Schönbrunn.
By day trip — where the coach actually goes
The Wachau & Melk36 tours
Hallstatt50 tours
Salzburg41 tours
Bratislava35 tours
Budapest41 tours- Every 1-day tour from Vienna →
By experience — what kind of day is it?
Three days in Vienna, in the order that works.
Schönbrunn
The Hofburg
St Stephen’s
The Belvedere
A concert nightThe newest Vienna reviews.
All recent →
Musical Tickets ROCK ME AMADEUS – THE FALCO MUSICAL
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Private Melk Hallstatt, Salzburg tour from Vienna
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Kunsthistorisches Museum Guided Tour incl. admission
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Klimt Villa (Gustav Klimt Atelier & Museum) Ticket
Read our review →
Johann Strauss 200th birthday anniversary exhibition
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Johann Strauss – Immersive Audiovisual Experience Ticket
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