Book nowBook the State Opera for Thursday and the Schönbrunn timed entry for Friday morning: both sell out weeks ahead in June.
Hours, prices and coordinates are from general knowledge; re-check them on the official sites the week before you fly.
Vienna's spring arts festival, theatre, dance and music across the city for five weeks a year.
Dates from general knowledge — check the official site
Three days: art nouveau and the opera on arrival, the summer palace and the old masters on the full day, Klimt and the Hofburg before the flight.
Land at 10:30, bags at the hotel by 12:00. The Secession and the Karlskirche after lunch, coffee at Café Sperl, and the State Opera at 19:00.
🗺 The whole day in Google Maps →card, buy at the machine40 min
The S7 from under the arrivals hall to Wien Mitte, then the U4 to Kettenbrückengasse. A single ticket from the airport covers the whole ride, about €4.70 each; the machines take bank cards. The CAT train is faster but costs €14.90 each and stops at Wien Mitte too.
Two minutes from the station. The reception keeps the bags until the room is ready.
Vienna's biggest market, a mile of stalls and small restaurants along the Wienzeile since the 18th century.
€20–30 each
The stalls nearer the Secession end are the market's restaurants: fish, Turkish, Viennese. Sit down at one with tables outside; the sellers of olives and spices are the place for snacks to take home, not lunch.
The 1898 exhibition hall of Klimt's breakaway artists, with a dome of gilded laurel leaves and his Beethoven Frieze in the basement.
about €12 eachday's highlight
At the market's end, five minutes' walk. The frieze runs round three walls of one room downstairs, painted in 1902 for an exhibition about Beethoven and meant to be temporary.
Stand at the far end to see all three walls at once; the gold figures on the right wall are the Ninth Symphony's choir. Upstairs is changing contemporary art. Allow an hour; closed Mondays.
The baroque church built after the plague of 1713, its green dome flanked by two carved columns.
about €9 each
Seven minutes across Karlsplatz. The ticket includes a panorama lift to a platform under the dome, where the frescoes are within arm's reach; the last flight of steps to the lantern is steep and optional.
A coffee house unchanged since 1880: billiard tables, bentwood chairs and newspapers on wooden holders.
€10–12 each
Ten minutes back past the market. Order a Melange, the Viennese milky coffee, and the Sperl torte; the water comes free with it. Nobody hurries you.
An hour to rest and change. The opera is one U4 stop or 15 minutes on foot.
The 1869 opera house on the Ring, one of the world's great companies, with a different performance almost every night from September to June.
€50–250 eachbook aheadsmart dress
The June programme comes out in spring; book on wiener-staatsoper.at, not through resellers. Parterre and first-balcony seats see the whole stage; cheap side boxes see half of it. Eat lightly before or at the interval buffet; Café Mozart behind the opera serves late.
Schönbrunn's state rooms at a timed entry, then the gardens up to the Gloriette. Bruegel at the Kunsthistorisches after lunch, and wine at a Heuriger in Grinzing.
🗺 The whole day in Google Maps →15 min
Five stops. A 24-hour ticket, €8 each, covers today's rides, Grinzing included.
The Habsburgs' 1,441-room summer palace, where Maria Theresa raised sixteen children and Franz Joseph and Sisi lived.
about €30 eachday's highlighttimed entry
Ten minutes from the station to the gate. Book the Grand Tour, 40 rooms with an audio guide, for 10:00 on schoenbrunn.at: the ticket has a time, and in June the morning slots sell out first.
The rooms run from Franz Joseph's plain study to the Great Gallery, where the Congress of Vienna danced in 1815. Photos are not allowed inside. Allow an hour and a quarter.
The colonnade on the hill above the palace gardens, built in 1775 as a viewpoint over the city.
freeuphill
The gardens are free. From the palace the path climbs past the Neptune Fountain to the Gloriette, 15 minutes and about 1,500 steps, steady but not steep. The café inside the colonnade serves coffee with the whole city below.
€25–35 each
Down through the gardens to the Hietzing gate. The streets outside have Viennese restaurants with tablecloths and garden tables; Wiener Schnitzel here is veal, and tafelspitz, boiled beef with apple-horseradish, is the dish of the house.
The Habsburg art collection in an 1891 palace on the Ring, with the largest group of Bruegel paintings anywhere.
about €21 each
U4 from Hietzing to Karlsplatz, then the U2 one stop to Museumsquartier, 25 minutes. Go straight to room 10 on the first floor: Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow and Tower of Babel. The domed café under the cupola is worth a coffee. Allow two hours.
A Heuriger is a winemaker's tavern serving its own new wine; Grinzing is the old wine village inside the city, under the Vienna Woods.
€25–40 each45 min each way
U4 to Heiligenstadt, then bus 38A, or the D tram and the 38 tram, 45 minutes. Look for the pine branch over the door: it means the tavern is open. Food is a buffet of cold meats, cheese and roast pork, paid by weight; the wine comes in quarter-litre mugs.
Saturday's flea market outside the hotel, then Klimt's Kiss at the Upper Belvedere. The Hofburg and St Stephen's in the afternoon, the airport train at 17:45.
🗺 The whole day in Google Maps →Leave the bags at the reception until about 17:30.
Vienna's biggest flea market, on the car park at the Naschmarkt's far end every Saturday.
Saturdays onlycash
Old porcelain, silver, records and postcards among the junk. The good things go before ten. Cash only, and bargaining is expected.
Prince Eugene's baroque palace of 1723, now the gallery holding the world's largest Klimt collection, The Kiss among it.
about €17 eachday's highlighttimed ticket
Tram D from the Ring or 25 minutes on foot. Book a timed ticket on belvedere.at; the room with The Kiss fills by late morning.
The Klimts hang together on the first floor, with Schiele and Kokoschka in the rooms beside them. Then walk down through the terraced garden to the Lower Belvedere gate, a gentle slope. Allow an hour and a half.
€20–30 each
Tram D back to Schwarzenbergplatz, then five minutes into the streets round the Stadtpark. Beisln, the plain Viennese inns with wooden panelling, serve goulash and schnitzel at lunchtime.
The Habsburgs' winter palace in the centre, with the apartments of Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth, known as Sisi.
about €20 each
Enter from Michaelerplatz. One ticket covers the silver collection, the Sisi Museum and the apartments; the audio guide is included. Allow an hour and a half, and sit for the silver if feet are tired.
Vienna's Gothic cathedral, with its patterned tile roof and the 136-metre south tower.
free to enter the back
Eight minutes along the Graben. The back of the nave is free; the roof is best seen from the north tower, reached by lift, about €7. The south tower is 343 steps, not for today.
The 1876 coffee house in a vaulted palace hall, where Trotsky played chess and the writers of 1900 sat.
€12–15 eachqueue
Ten minutes back past the Hofburg. There is often a queue at the door in the afternoon, usually 15 to 20 minutes; Café Landtmann on the Ring is the calmer second choice.
One ticket works on the U-Bahn, trams, buses and S-Bahn inside the city; a bank card buys it.
Ticket machines in every U-Bahn station take contactless bank cards, foreign ones included; the WienMobil app sells the same tickets. There are no gates: a paper ticket bought at a machine is already valid, a ticket from a tobacconist must be stamped in the blue box at the station. Plain-clothes inspectors fine €105 on the spot.
You wait to be seated in the grand cafés and seat yourself in the smaller ones. One coffee buys a table for as long as you like; a glass of water comes with it. A Melange is the house milky coffee; an Einspänner comes in a glass with whipped cream. Round the bill up by about 10% when you pay at the table.
At the State Opera most people wear a jacket or a dress; evening dress is for premieres and the ball. Coats and large bags go to the cloakroom, free or €1.
Cards work in museums, hotels and most restaurants, but some coffee houses, Heurigen and every flea-market stall want cash. Tip by rounding up about 10%, said aloud as you pay: tell the waiter the total you want to pay.
For two, 3 days and 2 nights in Vienna, staying by the Naschmarkt. Covers the hotel, the city tax, transport, tickets, the opera, every meal and coffee, and a buffer. Flights are not included.
| Item | Economy | Comfort | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hotel by the Naschmarkt, 2 nights | €320 | €560 | €160–280 a night for a double |
| City tax | €15 | €25 | Added to the hotel bill |
| Transport | €40 | €110 | Comfort takes the CAT and a taxi back |
| State Opera | €120 | €400 | €60–200 a seat |
| Secession, Karlskirche, Schönbrunn, Kunsthistorisches, Belvedere, Hofburg | €220 | €230 | About €110 each |
| Lunches | €130 | €200 | 3 lunches for two |
| Dinners | €90 | €180 | The Heuriger and an opera-night meal |
| Coffee and cake | €60 | €90 | Every afternoon, as asked |
| Buffer | €80 | €150 | A flea-market find, a taxi |
| Total | €1,075 | €1,945 |
Realistic figure: About €1,300–1,500 for two, without flights
Cards work almost everywhere. Keep €100 in cash for the flea market, the Heuriger and coffee houses that still prefer it.
All of them: the WayFriend guide library.
