Vienna
2,000 years
of European history,
in one city
     
 

Tours

Standard Tour


The Old Town
of Vienna

Standard Tour


Schönbrunn
Palace




The Museum
of Fine Arts




The Imperial
Treasury


The Sigmund
Freud Museum


The Jewish
Museums


The Belvedere /
Gustav Klimt


The Hofburg /
Apartments


The Mozart
House


The Imperial
Crypt


St Stephen's
Cathedral


Tinseltown Meets
Old Town
Top  
A journey down 2,000 years of European history

The tour of the Old Town of Vienna gives an insight into the history and culture of the city with a walk through the city's first district (
UNESCO World Heritage) taking in many of the major sights found there.

The tour can be adapted but usually includes the State Opera, the National Library, the Church of the Augustinians, the Spanish Riding School, the Hofburg, Heldenplatz, Parliament, Rathaus, Burgtheater, University of Vienna, the Holocaust Memorial, the Plague Column and St Stephen's Cathedral.

Longer tours can also incorporate more sights including outside the Ring (e.g. Belvedere, Hundertwasserhaus).

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
None

Top
The Old Town of Vienna


Pallas Athena
Goddess of Wisdom, Protector of the Arts
The Austrian Parliament, Vienna
 
The Habsburg's answer to Versailles

Schönbrunn Palace (UNESCO World Heritage) since the 18th century is where the Habsburgs spent the summers. Built to rival the French king's Versailles the palace played an integral part in the Habsburg dynasty, and in its demise.

Two major Habsburg rulers, Maria Theresia and Franz Joseph, are closely associated with the palace as are events connected to Mozart, Napoleon and John F. Kennedy.

Highlights: The Grand Gallery | The room where the Habsburg dynasty ended | Napoleon's bedroom, twice.

The tour includes the Highlight tour (22 rooms) and an overview of the main courtyard and garden.

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
Not included
€22/Adult/Highlight

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Schönbrunn Palace


The Kammergarten

The gardens of Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna
 
The Museum of Fine Arts, a work of art

The
Museum of Fine Arts, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, is a work of art in itself, purpose-built to hold the art collections of the Habsburg family.

Here is housed one of the most important art collections in European history: the unified collection of the Habsburg rulers drawing together centuries of acquisitions under one roof.

Highlights: The world's largest Pieter Bruegel, the Elder collection (Hunters in the Snow) | Benvenuto Cellini's (once stolen) Saliera.

This tour offers an overview of the history of the building and a selection of its main exhibits and can be rounded off with a visit to the museum's cafe.

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
Not included

Top
The Museum of Fine Arts
 
A vault, inside a castle, inside a palace

The
Imperial Treasury is hidden away in the most secure part of the Hofburg Palace: the Schweizerhof. Here in the oldest part of the Habsburg palace (13th century) are kept some of the most valuable artefacts from Austrian history.

Highlights: The medieval Order of the Golden Fleece | The 10th century Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire | The legendary Holy Lance.

This tour offers an overview of the history of the collection, a selection of its main exhibits and a look at the Old Hofburg, the original castle in which the collection is housed.

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
Not included

Top
The Imperial Treasury


Treasure chest

The Imperial Treasury is the Hofburg's most secure location and where the Habsburgs kept their weapons and valuables
 
An apartment and the origins of psychotherapy

The
Sigmund Freud Museum is the historic apartment where Freud lived most of his life (1891-1938), where he founded and developed psychoanalysis and where he eventually left for exile in London.

Here his children grew up including his youngest Anna (both Freuds had their practice here). Here is where he wrote his books and discussed with other pioneers in the field of psychoanalysis (Adler, Ferenczi, Jung) as well as famous contemporaries (Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Thornton Wilder, André Breton).

Highlights: The consulting room where psychoanalysis began | The study, where Freud wrote his books.

Tour includes Freud's apartment and a visit to nearby locations connected with his life.

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
Not included

Top
The Sigmund
Freud Museum


Birth of psychotherapy

In Vienna's Berggasse, Sigmund Freud laid the foundation for all future therapy
 
The story of modern-day Vienna's Jewish community

Vienna's main Jewish Museum is located in the Palais Eskeles, a former aristocrat's town palace just off the Graben. Here, spread over four floors is the story of the Viennese Jewish community from the 17th century up until the present day.

The story of the earlier Jewish community is a short walk away at the Jewish Museum Judenplatz. The square was once the centre of a thriving medieval Jewish community (12-15th century), one of the most important in Europe.

Judenplatz is also the location of the Schoa memorial, designed by Rachel Whiteread and unveiled in 2000.

The tour visits both museums, the Schoa memorial and can be extended to include the memorial wall and other nearby locations connected with Vienna's Jewish history.

Time

2 hours (or 3 hours)

Price € 160 (or € 200)
Entrance fees
Not included

Top
The Jewish Museum(s)


A tzitzit
: the fringe, for example, on a prayer shawl
Vienna's Jewish community dates back to the 12th century and its dramatic story is told in two Jewish museums
 
An art gallery, an artist, a building with a view

The Belvedere is Vienna's second most important summer palace after Schönbrunn with its famous view of the old town.

Whilst Schönbrunn was built by the Habsburgs the Belvedere was built at the beginning of the 18th century by the secret emperor, Prince Eugene of Savoy.

Today the former summer palace houses one of Vienna's major art galleries and includes the world's largest Gustav Klimt collection.

Highlights: Gustav Klimt's masterpiece The Kiss | The Marble Hall, where the State Treaty was signed in 1955 | The beautiful view of the Old Town.

Tour includes a brief history of the palace and grounds and a tour of the gallery's Klimts including The Kiss.

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
Not included

Top
The Belvedere
Gustav Klimt


Gold

Vienna, 1900: a melting pot of people, ideas, tensions. At its centre, Gustav Klimt and his golden period
 
18 wings. 19 courtyards. 2,600 rooms. One family

The Hofburg, after the Vatican in Rome, is the world's 2nd largest living quarters. Starting its life as a small medieval castle in the 13th century it developed over six centuries of Habsburg rule into today's sprawling palace, serving as the dynasty's winter palace and the focal point of their empire.

All housed here: the presidential offices, a series of important museums, the headquarters of the OSCE and the National Library.

The tour takes in the main historic buildings which make up the palace and finishes with a visit to the imperial apartments where the Habsburg emperor and empress lived and worked.

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
Not included

Top
The Hofburg
The Imperial Apartments


Millennial hub

The Hofburg was the centre of Habsburg power for 640 years
 
Outside of Salzburg, the most important building connected with Mozart's life

Between September 1784 and April 1787 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived in the Domgasse behind St Stephen's Cathedral. It was the apartment he lived in the longest in Vienna where he had at least 13 addresses in the decade he lived in the city.

Here he lived with his wife Constance, his newborn son Carl Thomas, four servants, a dog and a songbird.

His most expensive apartment from the decade he spent living in Vienna (and the only one remaining in the capital), it was here he wrote The Marriage of Figaro, taught promising young musicians and received guests and friends (including Joseph Haydn).

The tour includes Mozart's apartment and a visit to nearby locations connected with his time in Vienna.

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
Not included

Top
The Mozart House


Opera revolution

Mozart's work in Vienna (as did Freud's) had a global impact
 
"Nothing is eternal, except power."
Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1809, after visiting the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.

Since the transfer of the coffins of Emperor Matthias and Empress Anna in 1633 to the burial vault beneath the Church of the Capuchin Friars on the Neue Market, it has become the Habsburg family crypt. One of Europe's most important royal burial sites, it was continually extended over the centuries and now holds the remains of 12 emperors and 22 empresses with a total of over 150 Habsburgs including siblings and children.

In 2023, the last Habsburg burial took place at the crypt.

The tour includes the crypt and a visit to locations nearby connected with the burials of the Habsburgs.

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
Not included

Top
The Imperial Crypt


Phoenix rising: symbol for the eternal
The Habsburgs believed in eternity, they believed they would become gods
 
Plague, fire, war, siege, revolution, pogrom

St Stephen's Cathedral has witnessed 800 years of European history. Mozart was married here, Haydn a choirboy, Hitler painted it in watercolour. Hit by a thousand Ottoman cannonballs in 1683 and ravaged by countless fires it remains a central point of the city and the country's history.

Standing at the meeting point of four long-distance trade routes, from the cathedral it was south to Venice and the Italian ports, north to Prague, east to Budapest and west to Bavaria and beyond.

The tour includes the interior of the cathedral, a walk around St Stephen's Square and a visit to the underground Virgil Chapel.

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
Not included

Top
St Stephen's Cathedral


Looking north

St Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna
 
Tarantino. Cruise. Eastwood. Spielberg.

From the Hollywood A-list of today to the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s and 60s there have been many connections between Vienna and the US film capital.

From film locations, premieres and anecdotes to the Viennese filmmakers who left their stamp on the US film industry this tour connects locations in Vienna's old town with Hollywood and international English-language cinema. No history. No sights. Just film.

Time

2 hours

Price € 160
Entrance fees
None

Top
Tinseltown Meets
Old Town


Spy capital of the world

Vienna's atmosphere, in film
   
 

Top






 

"Hier ist doch gewiß
das Klavierland!"


"This really is pianoland!"


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-91)

Mozart writing to his father Leopold in 1781 after leaving secure employment with the Princely Archbishop of Salzburg to move to Vienna and become one of the world's first freelance musicians.

Mozart spent the rest of his life in the city composing his four masterpieces during this time: The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Cosi Fan Tutte (1790) and in 1791, shortly before his death, his greatest success, The Magic Flute.

He lived at many addresses in Vienna: the only one which remains today is in the Domgasse, where Mozart lived the longest, from 1784-87.

Film trailer
 
   
   
Vienna, 1781-91

Written by
Peter Schaffer
(based on his stageplay)

Directed by
Milos Forman

Production
USA/France/
Czechoslovakia/Italy, 1984


Filmed
in Prague
(and Vienna
)

Academy Awards
(Eight including)
Best Picture
Best Director
Best Actor (F. Murray
Abraham as Antonio Salieri)
Best Adapted Screenplay