Vienna is a city of reserved seats.
Which Schönbrunn ticket includes the state rooms. Which Golden Hall concert is a full orchestra and which is four players in period costume. Which Hallstatt day gets there ahead of the coaches. Every tour in Vienna, reviewed and ranked.
Mozart is still Vienna’s biggest draw.
Vivaldi under the dome at Karlskirche, Mozart in the Musikverein’s Golden Hall, a chamber ensemble in St Peter’s. Vienna sells a concert every night of the year; the difference between them is the room and the size of the orchestra.
The Habsburgs left Vienna a to-do list.
Two palaces, a cathedral, a concert hall and a coffee house. Most Vienna itineraries are built from the same handful of rooms — this is how to book each of them well.
The Ring, the palace, the Golden Hall: Vienna’s most booked.
Every review →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the city — and what each one is actually worth its afternoon for.
1
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Concert in Karlskirche
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons comes alive in Vienna’s Karlskirche, performed by Orchestra 1756 on period instruments, for about $40.
From · $40
Read our review →
2
Schönbrunn Palace & Gardens Skip-the-Line Tour
from $63
3
Light of Creation Votive Church Immersive Light Show
from $25
4
Vienna Spanish Riding School Guided Tour
from $28
5
Classical Concert in the World-Famous Musikverein
from $17
6
Hallstatt Day Trip with Boat Ride Option
from $108
7
Skip-the-Line Sisi Museum, Hofburg and Gardens Tour
from $61
8
Skip-the-Line Schönbrunn Palace & Gardens Tour
from $76
A Viennese coffee house is a rented living room.
Order a melange, take a newspaper off the rack and stay two hours; nobody will move you on. UNESCO lists the habit as cultural heritage. The tours that work are the ones that treat cake as history, not as a snack stop.
All 13 coffee house tours →
From Vienna: Bratislava by lunch, Hallstatt by afternoon.
No other capital has this much within a morning’s drive. Hallstatt and Salzburg west, the Wachau vineyards up the Danube, Bratislava an hour downstream and Budapest beyond it. The long ones are long — check what time the coach actually gets back.
- 1Hallstatt Day Trip with Boat Ride Optionfrom $108
- 2Day trips from Vienna: Hallstatt & Salzburg Guided Tourfrom $124
- 3Danube Valley Day Trip from Viennafrom $141.77
What a day in Vienna actually costs.
Every tour on the site, sorted by price. A cathedral, a market walk and a church concert is a full day for the price of one palace dinner.
Church concerts, market walks, cathedral entry and the guided hours that fit between them.
The standard Vienna day: skip-the-line palace tickets, food tours, Golden Hall seats, the Fiaker round.
Full-day trips to Hallstatt and Budapest, private guides, dinner-and-concert evenings.
Vienna kept things no other city bothered to.
Cathedrals and galleries are everywhere in Europe. The horse cabs, the composers’ cemetery and the two-hour coffee are Vienna’s alone.
The Fiaker
The two-horse cab is a working Vienna trade with its own licence, its own rank on Stephansplatz and drivers who inherit the route from a parent. A short round does the Old Town lanes; the longer one crosses the Ring past the opera and the Hofburg. Buy the time, not the distance, and agree it before you climb in.
- 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 Composers’ Cemetery
Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and both Strausses lie in one deliberately arranged grove at the Zentralfriedhof, with a monument to Mozart in the middle of them — he is not actually there. It is a tram ride out and far bigger than it sounds: deer graze between the sections, and the Jugendstil church at the centre is worth the walk on its own.
- 1Vienna Central Cemetery Guided Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 3,307 reviews
- 2Guided Walking Tour of the Central Cemetery★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 392 reviews
- 3Private Walking Tour of the Central Cemetery★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 102 reviews
The Two-Hour Coffee
A melange, a glass of water and the day’s papers on wooden racks — the water gets refilled, the bill does not arrive until you ask. Freud, Trotsky and half of Vienna’s literature ran on this arrangement. The best tours pace three houses across an afternoon and explain why the cake list is that long.
- 1Vienna Coffee, Cake & Pastries Tour with Local Stories★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 470 reviews
- 2Hungry in Vienna? A Food Lover’s Coffee & Market Walk★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 276 reviews
- 3Typical Austrian Food Tour with Coffee House Visit★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 159 reviews
Vienna after the last curtain call.
All evening tours →
Ghosts and Legends Guided Nighttime Walking Tour
Read our review →The Vienna tickets that will not be there on the day.
Most of the city can be booked the night before from your hotel. These four cannot — they run on performance calendars, timed entry slots and a season that closes.
- 01Vienna Spanish Riding School Guided TourThe Lipizzaners perform on selected dates only and the Winter Riding School is a small room. Pick the date before you pick the flight.
- 02Classical Concert in the World-Famous MusikvereinSeats are sold by tier and the affordable tiers empty first. Days ahead, not hours.
- 03Schönbrunn Palace & Gardens Skip-the-Line TourPalace entry runs on timed slots. Arrive in July without one and you wait for whichever hour is still free.
- 04Christmas & New Year’s Concert in St. Peter’s ChurchThe markets open in mid-November and are packed away after Christmas. There is no version of them in January.
Vienna was built for bad weather.
A city that spends four months under low cloud put its best rooms indoors. Bruegel’s harvest paintings, Klimt behind glass, a marble table with a newspaper on it, a church with an orchestra in it. None of this cares what the sky is doing.
By landmark — where the day actually happens
Schönbrunn Palace60 tours
The Hofburg24 tours
The Belvedere25 tours
St Stephen’s Cathedral11 tours
The Prater & the Wheel9 tours
The Danube16 tours
The Zentralfriedhof9 tours- Every Vienna tour →
Three days in Vienna, in the right order.
The concert
The HeurigerNewest Vienna reviews.
All recent →
Wachau Valley Private Wine Tour with Tasting and Gourmet Lunch
Read our review →
Danube Valley Tour with Melk, Dürnstein with wine tasting and boat.
Read our review →
Inside Freud’s Mind: Self-Guided Mystery Walk in Vienna
Read our review →
Private Transfer from Vienna to Munich, Hotel-to-hotel, English-speaking driver
Read our review →