AUSTRIA · CENTRAL EUROPE
Imperial palaces, alpine lakes, live Mozart.
Vienna and its concert halls, Salzburg and the Sound of Music, Hallstatt and the lakes, Innsbruck and the Tyrol. The tours, tickets and concerts the length of the country.
Only in Austria
Three things you can only do here.
Palace tours and river cruises you will find across Europe. These three you will not. The stallions in the Hofburg, the concert halls Mozart wrote for, the hills the film made famous. Build the trip around them.
In the Hofburg
The Lipizzaner Stallions
For more than 450 years the white Lipizzaners have trained to the same classical dressage inside Vienna’s Winter Riding School, under the chandeliers of a Habsburg ballroom. No other riding school has kept the tradition unbroken. The morning training and the gala performances happen nowhere else on earth.
- 1 Vienna: Spanish Riding School Training
- 2 Vienna Spanish Riding School Guided Tour
- 3 Performance Of The Lipizzans At Spanish Riding School
After dark
Mozart Where He Played It
Vienna is the city of Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and Mahler, and the orchestras still play them nightly in the rooms they were written for. The gilded Musikverein, the palace halls, Vivaldi by candlelight in the Karlskirche. This is the world capital of classical music, and the music never moved out.
- 1 Vienna: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Concert in Karlskirche
- 2 Vienna: Classical Concert in the World-Famous Musikverein
- 3 Vienna: Mozart Concert at the Musikverein – Golden Hall
In Salzburg
The Sound of Music, On Location
The gazebo, the Mirabell gardens, the abbey from the wedding, the lake the children tipped into. Salzburg is the one place to walk the real film locations, in the baroque city where Mozart was born. The hills behind the town are the ones that are alive.
- 1 The Original Sound of Music Tour in Salzburg
- 2 Salzburg: Original Sound of Music Tour
- 3 From Salzburg: Half-Day Tour to Hallstatt
The Salzkammergut
Where the village meets the lake.
Hallstatt sits on a thin shelf of shore between a mountain wall and a still green lake, a few hours from both Salzburg and Vienna. The oldest salt mine in the world is in the cliff above it. The lake country around it is all peaks, water and small spa towns, and the day trips run from the cities all summer.
The Hallstatt day trips →Start here
Begin with the ticket everyone books.
The single experience more travellers book than any other in Austria. A good place to start planning the trip.
The classics
Austria's Most Popular Tours
Schönbrunn, the Musikverein, Hallstatt, the Sound of Music. The tickets and tours at the top of every Austria list.
By region
Pick a region.
Each one is its own trip. Vienna for the palaces and the music. Salzburg for Mozart and the lakes. Hallstatt for the postcard. The Tyrol for the Alps. The Wachau for the vineyards.
By tour type
Or pick how to spend the day.
A concert if it is your evening in Vienna. A walking tour to read the old town. A boat down the Danube, a cellar in the Wachau, a Christmas market in December, and the rest.
Planning the trip
Vienna, Salzburg, or both?
The two cities anchor almost every Austria trip. Here is how most travellers split the time between them, and the train that joins the two.
Schönbrunn & the Hofburg
The palaces the Habsburgs left behind.
Six hundred years of empire ran from Vienna, and the city is still full of it. Schönbrunn and its gardens on the edge of town, the Hofburg in the centre with the imperial apartments and the Sisi rooms, the Belvedere with its Klimts. A skip-the-line ticket is the difference between an afternoon inside and an hour in the queue.
- 1 Vienna: Mozart and Strauss Concert at Schönbrunn
- 2 Vienna: Imperial Treasury in the Hofburg Palace
- 3 Vienna: Skip the Line Schönbrunn Palace and Gardens Guided Tour
Inside the collections
The great museums.
Klimt’s Kiss at the Belvedere, the Bruegel room and the Habsburg treasures at the Kunsthistorisches, the city’s modern wing at the MuseumsQuartier. The three we would put first on a rainy afternoon.
At the table
Coffee houses and the Viennese table.
A marble-table coffee house with the cake trolley, a Heuriger wine tavern on the city edge, a Sachertorte where it was invented, a strudel you roll yourself. The afternoons worth slowing down for.
Out of the city, onto the river
Down the Danube.
West of Vienna the river bends through the Wachau: terraced vineyards, the apricot orchards, Dürnstein’s blue church and the great abbey at Melk. By cruise boat or by road, the best half-day out of the capital.
When to come
Austria changes with the season.
Each part of the year has its own reason to come. Here is what the country does best, month by month, and where to point the trip.
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