Lonely Planet - Vienna Travel Guide

Welcome to
Vienna

Vienna is packed with imperial history; at the same time it has exciting contemporary museums and lively eating and nightlife scenes.

Few cities can boast the imperial grandeur of Vienna, once the centre of the powerful Habsburg monarchy. Lipizzaner stallions performing elegant equine ballet, the angelic tones of the Vienna Boys Choir drifting across a courtyard, outrageously opulent palaces such as Schloss Belvedere and Schloss Schnbrunn, and the monumental Hofburg complex as a visitor today, you feel grandeur everywhere in Vienna.

Vienna is one the most musical cities in the world. This is partly due to the vast number of great composers and musicians who were born here or lived and worked here. Visiting Austrias capital therefore means experiencing the works of Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Beethoven, Johann Strauss (both father and son), Liszt, Brahms, Bruckner and many others in venues such as the Staatsoper and Musikverein. The music of Bach and Hndel continues to be performed in Viennas historic churches today, and Viennas Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments, paired with a visit to the Haus der Musik, takes you deeper into the texture of music and how it is created. Venues for classical music are augmented by some great clubs and live rock and jazz places.

Its hard to imagine a more livable city than Vienna. This is a metropolis where regulars sit in cosy coffee houses and offer credible solutions to world chaos over the noble bean; where Beisln (bistro pubs) serve delicious brews, wines and traditional food; where talented chefs are taking the capital in new culinary directions; and where an efficient transport system will ferry you across town from a restaurant to a post-dinner drink in no time at all. Its safe, it has lots of bicycle tracks and it even has its own droll sense of humour.

Vienna is a city where postmodernist and contemporary architectural designs contrast and fuse with the monumental and historic. The MuseumsQuartier is a perfect example, with modern museum architecture integrated into a public space created around former stables for the Habsburgs horses. Twentieth-century designs such as Loos American Bar are little short of inspiring, while contemporary Vienna is constantly being given new and exciting infrastructural designs such as the new Twin City Liners boat landing (with the restaurant, bar and cafe Motto am Fluss) and the enormous Hauptbahnhof (main train station).

Kunsthistorisches Museum ()
WALTER BIBIKOW / GETTY IMAGES

Why I Love Vienna

By Anthony Haywood, Author

Buzzing restaurants, coffee houses like living rooms, Beisln, innovative museums, absurdly pompous architecture and the sheer quality of life. These are just some of the reasons why I love Vienna. But what I especially love is exploring the capital by foot. Some evenings I like to walk through the courtyards of the historic centre, other nights Ill explore the idiosyncratic Vorstadt districts places like Margareten, Neubau, Josefstadt and Leopoldstadt where the rawness of ordinary life washes to the surface. Vienna is a large, variegated city, but its still one you can easily walk through to discover new sides.

See for much more.

Viennas Top 10

JON ARNOLD / GETTY IMAGES

The magnificent rococo former summer palace and gardens of the Habsburgs are a perfect place to experience the pomp, circumstance and gracious legacy of Austrias former monarchs. A visit to 40 of the palaces lavishly appointed rooms reveals the lifestyle and the eccentricities of Europes most powerful family, right down to Empress Elisabeths obsession with her figure. Beyond the palace, Schloss Schnbrunn Gardens invite a stroll past pseudo-Roman ruins, along bucolic paths winding through leafy woods and a stopover in Gloriette.

Schloss Schnbrunn & Around

Viennas Top 10

SYLVAIN SONNET / GETTY IMAGES

As well as accumulating vassal lands, the Habsburgs assembled one of Europes finest collections of art and artefacts. The majestic highlight of this museum is the Picture Gallery, an encounter with a vast and emotionally powerful collection of works by grand masters, such as Pieter Bruegel the Elders evocative and industrial Tower of Babel from the 16th century, or the bright plenitude of Giuseppe Arcimboldos Summer.