286 Best Sights in Austria

This church was built around 1630. Its flamboyant Baroque interior contains a fine trompe-l'oeil ceiling fresco by Andrea Pozzo, the master of visual trickery, who was imported from Rome in 1702 for the job. You might hear a Mozart or Haydn mass sung here in Latin on many Sundays.

This more-than-1,000-year-old tower, built in the 11th century and the oldest building in the town, houses a local history museum with details about local folklore, old costumes, and artifacts, as well as rotating exhibits featuring works and objects by local design companies or artists.

Just opposite the Hofburg is a green oasis with a rose garden, a shining white 19th-century Greek temple, and a rather wistful white-marble monument to Empress Elisabeth, Franz Josef's Bavarian wife, who died of a dagger wound inflicted by an Italian anarchist in Geneva in 1898. If not overrun with latter-day hippies, these can offer spots to sit for a few minutes while contemplating Vienna's most ambitious piece of 19th-century city planning: the Ringstrasse.

This state-of-the-art museum with its facade of concrete flowers (look closely and you'll see they are molds of plastic bottle bottoms) has roots dating back 150 years. Today, it's home to four floors of exhibitions on the history, culture, and day-to-day life of Vorarlbergers. Expect everything from relics of Brigantium, the Roman administrative city that once stood where Bregenz is today, to Gothic and Romanesque ecclesiastical works, to videoed interviews with current residents. Information in English can be limited, but it's worth the entrance fee alone for the extraordinary top-floor blackout room with an expansive view over the lake. The exhibits in the atrium are free to view.

When Emperor Franz Josef was a young man, he was strolling along the Mölker Bastei, one of the few remaining portions of the old city wall, when he was taken unawares and stabbed in the neck by a Hungarian revolutionary. He survived, and in gratitude his family ordered that a church be built exactly on the spot he was looking at when he was struck down. The neo-Gothic church was built of gray limestone with two openwork turrets and was finally completed in 1879, after 23 years of construction.

Beautiful (and not so beautiful) cars, motorcycles, and tractors from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s are on display here, including the remarkable one-person Messerschmitt Bubble Car, the world's largest convertible, and other, dare we say more appealing, automobiles. With around 200 exhibits, this is a great place to visit for a few hours on a rainy day. Admission is free with the SalzburgerLand Card.

Most of the carriages on display here are still roadworthy, and in fact Schönbrunn dusted off the black royal funeral carriage for the burial ceremony of Empress Zita in 1989. There are also a number of sleighs in the collection, including one upholstered in leopard skin. Today a special Sisi trail leads through the museum; on show are some of her famous gowns, carriages, personal objects, and paintings, highlighting the empress's life from marriage to her tragic death.

One of modern architecture's greatest curiosities, the Post Office Savings Bank was designed in 1904 by Otto Wagner, whom many consider the father of 20th-century architecture. In his manifesto Modern Architecture, he condemned 19th-century revivalist architecture and pleaded for a modern style that honestly expressed modern building methods. Accordingly, the exterior walls of the Post Office Savings Bank are mostly flat and undecorated; visual interest is supplied merely by varying the pattern of the bolts used to hold the marble slabs in place. Later architects embraced Wagner's beliefs wholeheartedly, although they used different, truly modern building materials: glass and concrete rather than marble.

You shouldn't miss seeing Michael Pacher's great altarpiece in the 15th-century Wallfahrtskirche, one of the finest examples of late-Gothic woodcarving to be found anywhere. This 36-foot masterpiece took 10 years (1471–81) to complete. The paintings and carvings on this winged altar were used as an Armenbibel (a Bible for the poor)—illustrations for those who couldn't read or write. You're in luck if you're at the church on a sunny day, when sunlight off the nearby lake dances on the ceiling in brilliant reflections through the stained-glass windows.

Like many family-run wineries in Rust (most in Austria are family businesses), this beautiful, yellow-fronted building in the heart of town produces white and red sweet wine from the vineyards around Rust. Many are for sale, including a selection of organic wines.

Beethoven lived in the Pasqualatihaus multiple times between 1804 and 1815, including while he was composing his only opera, Fidelio. He also composed his Seventh Symphony and Fourth Piano Concerto when this was his home. Today this small apartment houses a commemorative museum (in distressingly modern style). After navigating the narrow and twisting stairway, you might well ask how he maintained the jubilant spirit of the works he wrote there. Note particularly the prints that show what the window view out over the Mölker bastion was like when Beethoven lived here, and the current view too—it's a fantastic fourth-floor look out onto the Ringstrasse. A Musicus combination ticket for homes of six musicians is available.

Housed in an incongruously modern building at the east end of the Karlsplatz, this museum possesses Viennese historical artifacts and treasures (everything from 16th-century armor to paintings by Schiele and Klimt to the preserved facade of Otto Wagner's Die Zeit offices). The museum is scheduled to reopen from renovations in December 2024, and the museum exterior will host rotating (and free!) open-air exhibits until then.

The imposing "Vienna Gate" still represents the entrance to the medieval town of Hainburg on the Danube, and buses, tractors, and a steady stream of cars still squeeze through its passage daily. The town is encircled by remarkably well-preserved 13th-century walls with 12 gates and towers, including the Wienertor, which is the largest extant medieval gate in Europe. In 1683, the Turks devastated the town, leaving only a handful of survivors, including composer Josef Haydn's grandfather (who, as a small boy, scrambled up a chimney and hid from the marauders). Climb up inside the Wienertor, now a museum, and see an impressive supply of weaponry left behind by the invaders—clearly in a hurry to get to Vienna—as well as a stockpile from other ancient wars. A view out the narrow window offers a charming look down at the winding main street and the church steeple. While you can always stop by and view the exterior of the tower, inside access is only available Sunday and holidays.

Austrians take seriously the pomp of a funeral, brass bands and all, and nowhere is that more evident than the Central Cemetery. A streetcar from Schwarzenbergplatz takes you to the front gates of the cemetery that contains the graves of most of Vienna's great composers: Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, the Johann Strausses (father and son), and Arnold Schönberg, among others. Find your way around with the help of an audio guide, which can be rented for a small fee. For a hefty fee, Fiakers are on standby for a carriage ride around the beautiful grounds. The monument to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a memorial only; the approximate location of his unmarked grave can be seen at the now deconsecrated St. Marx-Friedhof at Leberstrasse 6–8.

Kids of all ages enjoy this outstanding museum, where they can experience the fine line between the real and virtual worlds, making screenplays come to life by becoming directors, sound technicians, authors, and actors. For the little ones there's an "ocean" where kids and parents enter a play area inhabited by magical underwater creatures. The museum operates through little workshops, with the staff very hands-on and available to the children. You must book your tickets for a specific admission time, so reserve via the website before you go.

Today this block, bounded by Singerstrasse, Grünangergasse, and Blutgasse, is a splendid example of city renovation and restoration, with cafés, shops, and galleries tucked into the corners. Nobody knows for certain how its gruesome name originated—Blut is German for "blood"— but one legend has it that Knights Templar were slaughtered here when their order was abolished in 1312. (There are roads named "Blutgasse" in villages surrounding Vienna, so many believe the name to be in remembrance of massacres suffered during the two Turkish invasions.) In later, pre-pavement, years the narrow street was known as Mud Lane. You can look inside the courtyards to see the open galleries that connect various apartments on the upper floors, the finest example being at Blutgasse 3. At the corner of Singerstrasse sits the 18th-century Neupauer-Breuner Palace, with its monumental entranceway and delicate windows. Opposite, at Singerstrasse 17, is the Rottal Palace, attributed to Hildebrandt, with its wealth of classical wall motifs, a contrast to the simple 18th-century facades on Blutgasse.