Austria 4 Day Itinerary
Four days in Austria is enough to cover three cities and still feel like you’ve been somewhere rather than somewhere you’ve passed through. The itinerary below treats Vienna as both starting and ending point with Salzburg and Innsbruck in between, using the excellent rail connections that make Austria one of the easiest countries in Europe to move around without hiring a car.
Day 1: Vienna
Getting In
Vienna International Airport (Schwechat) is 18 km southeast of the centre. The cheapest option into town is the S7 train at €2.10 for a single (you need an additional zone supplement on top of any day pass). The City Airport Train (CAT) costs €14.90 one-way and takes 16 minutes nonstop to Wien Mitte, which is the more comfortable option with luggage. A licensed taxi runs €36-48 and takes 25-30 minutes depending on traffic. If you arrive during rush hour, the CAT is almost always the right call.
Public Transport
Vienna’s U-Bahn, trams, and buses are unified under the Wiener Linien network. A 24-hour pass costs around €8 and a 7-day pass costs €25.20. The Vienna City Card adds museum discounts on top of unlimited transit for €29 (72 hours) and is worth calculating against your planned visits. The Belvedere alone runs €19.50 and Schönbrunn Grand Tour costs €32, so the maths becomes favourable quickly for anyone doing three or more paid attractions.
Morning: Schönbrunn and the Imperial Quarter
Start at Schönbrunn Palace when it opens at 8am, before tour groups arrive. The Grand Tour covers 40 imperial rooms including the Great Gallery where Napoleon once held court and the Mirror Room where the six-year-old Mozart performed for Empress Maria Theresa. The gardens are free and worth an hour on their own. The Gloriette hilltop structure at the garden’s far end provides the best elevated view over the palace and Vienna beyond, and costs a few euros to enter if you want to go up.
Afternoon: Belvedere and Klimt
The Upper Belvedere holds the single most visited painting in Austria: Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss,” painted in 1907-1908 during his Golden Period, when he was covering canvases in actual gold leaf. The image is reproduced so widely that seeing the original requires a mental reset. It is larger than you expect and the surface texture, the mosaic-pattern gilding, does not survive reproduction. Book tickets online at €19.50 to avoid the queue. The Lower Belvedere and Orangery are included in most combination tickets and contain Klimt sketches and the Baroque Museum.
Evening: Naschmarkt and the Old Town
The Naschmarkt, Vienna’s main outdoor market stretching along the Linke Wienzeile, winds down around 6pm on weekdays. The Saturday flea market section at the western end is the better visit for atmosphere and bargain hunting. For dinner, the Naschmarkt’s surrounding restaurants represent better value than the tourist-heavy Innere Stadt. The Beisl format, small traditional Austrian restaurants, is the right category: look for Wiener Schnitzel (fried veal, not pork, at the serious establishments) and a glass of Grüner Veltliner from the Wachau region.
Practical Notes
German is the official language; English works throughout the tourist areas. Austria uses the euro. The Stephansdom (St. Stephen’s Cathedral) at the centre of the old town charges separately for the towers and catacombs but the cathedral floor is free. Going up the South Tower at sunset (tickets around €6) earns one of the better views over the city’s roofline.
Day 2: Salzburg
Getting There
Direct trains run from Wien Hauptbahnhof to Salzburg Hauptbahnhof in around 2 hours 20 minutes with the fast Railjet service. Book at least a day ahead through ÖBB (Austrian Federal Railways) for the best fares; last-minute tickets on this route can be significantly more expensive. Salzburg’s old town is about a 20-minute walk from the main station, or take bus 1 or 2 for two stops.
Morning: The Fortress and Old Town
Hohensalzburg Fortress, the medieval castle that sits on the Festungsberg hill above the old town, is reached by the Festungsbahn funicular or a steep walk. An all-inclusive ticket covering the funicular and interior rooms runs around €15 per adult. The rooms themselves, particularly the Fürstenzimmer (Prince’s Rooms) with their original late-Gothic furnishings, are better than most castle interiors. The panoramic view from the fortress walls over the Salzach River and the Alps behind is among the best in Austria. Go up in the morning before the Sound of Music tour groups arrive from their coaches.
Hohensalzburg is worth it. Many visitors arrive late morning and find 40-minute queues for the funicular. Early entry makes a substantial difference.
Midday: Mozart, Getreidegasse, and the Cathedral
Mozart’s Birthplace at Getreidegasse 9 is a small museum in the house where Mozart was born in 1756. Entry costs around €12. It is dense with manuscripts, early instruments, and family portraits but the building itself is modest; adjust expectations accordingly. Getreidegasse itself is a narrow medieval shopping street with wrought-iron guild signs above each shop and makes for a good ten-minute walk regardless of whether you enter the museum.
The Salzburg Cathedral (Dom) is Baroque at full scale: a nave that seats 10,000 people, ceiling frescoes of enormous ambition, and a baptismal font that was in use when Mozart was christened here in 1756. Entry is free. The adjacent Domplatz square is where the outdoor scenes of Jedermann (Everyman) are performed each August during the Salzburg Festival, one of Europe’s major classical music events.
Afternoon: Mirabell Gardens and a Real Beer Hall
The Mirabell Gardens are formal Baroque pleasure grounds open to the public at no charge. The hedge mazes and fountains are pleasant; the Sound of Music connection (the Do-Re-Mi sequence was filmed here) draws specific crowds but does not detract from the overall space.
For the meal that locals actually eat: Augustinerbräu Kloster Mülln, a monastic brewery turned beer hall a short walk from the gardens, operates on self-service: you buy a stone mug, wash it at a fountain, fill it at one of the brewery taps, and collect food from the market stalls inside. A litre of the monastery’s own lager costs around €5. The outdoor garden holds hundreds of people on summer evenings. This is not a tourist restaurant playing at authenticity; it is an actual institution that has operated since 1621.
Skip the restaurant options immediately around the Residenzplatz. They are serving location rather than food.
Evening
Steingasse, a narrow medieval lane on the right bank of the Salzach, is worth a walk after dinner. Largely missed by tourists focused on the left-bank old town, it has the feel of medieval Salzburg without the tour-group density. The lantern lighting at dusk is genuine atmosphere.
Day 3: Innsbruck
Getting There
Salzburg to Innsbruck takes approximately 1 hour 50 minutes by train. The route runs through the Inn Valley with the Bavarian Alps visible most of the way. Book the same way via ÖBB.
Morning: Old Town and the Golden Roof
Innsbruck’s Old Town is compact: 20 minutes covers the main strip. The Golden Roof (Goldenes Dachl) is exactly what it sounds like, a 15th-century oriel balcony covered in 2,738 fire-gilded copper tiles, commissioned by Emperor Maximilian I. The small museum inside costs around €5 and explains the Habsburg politics behind what was essentially a very expensive piece of public relations. Worth ten minutes. The roof itself you can see from the street for free.
The Innsbruck Cathedral (Domkirche St. Jakob) is a two-minute walk from the Golden Roof and holds a Lucas Cranach altar painting that almost nobody notices because the frescoed ceiling is so distracting.
Midday: Nordkette Cable Car
The Nordkettenbahn starts in the centre of the city and climbs in stages to Hafelekar at 2,256 metres, providing a vertiginous view of the Inn Valley from above. A return ticket to Hafelekar costs around €49 for adults; the Innsbruck Card (available in 24, 48, and 72-hour versions) includes the cable car at no additional cost and can be worth buying if you are also hitting the city’s paid museums.
The cable car system was designed by Zaha Hadid; the lower stations (Hungerburgbahn) are her work and worth appreciating on the way up. At Hafelekar, a 15-minute walk from the station reaches a proper Alpine ridge. In summer the trail continues into the Karwendel range for hikers who want more than the view from the station. At Seegrube (one stop below), the restaurant serves Tyrolean Knödel (bread dumplings) with a view that makes the food taste better than it might otherwise.
Afternoon: Ambras Castle
Schloss Ambras, a few kilometres south of the centre (take the Sightseer bus), is the Habsburg’s Tyrolean estate and contains one of the oldest permanent museum collections in the world, assembled by Archduke Ferdinand II in the 16th century. The Kunstkammer (chamber of curiosities) on the upper floor includes armour, carved ivory, mechanical automata, and objects of sufficient strangeness to hold attention. Entry runs around €16. This is the sight in Innsbruck that most itineraries skip in favour of the cable car alone; that is a mistake.
Evening
Innsbruck’s Maria-Theresien-Strasse is the main pedestrian thoroughfare and the best evening walk: the triumphal arch at the south end frames a view up to the Nordkette that changes colour as the sun sets behind the western mountains. Tyrolean cooking in the restaurants around here runs towards Tiroler Gröstl (pan-fried potatoes, beef, and fried egg) and Speckknödel (bacon dumplings in broth). Order these over the generic Wiener Schnitzel available everywhere.
Day 4: Vienna (Return)
Getting Back
Return to Vienna by Railjet from Innsbruck Hauptbahnhof (approximately 3 hours 45 minutes, or under 2 hours on the faster EC services that run several times daily). Seat reservations are strongly recommended for Innsbruck to Vienna.
Morning: Kunsthistorisches Museum
The Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) faces the Natural History Museum across the Maria-Theresien-Platz and contains the Habsburg art collection proper. Entry is around €21. The Dutch and Flemish rooms hold the largest collection of Bruegel paintings in the world (twelve of the surviving 40 panel paintings), which alone justifies the ticket. The building itself is Ringstrasse monumental architecture at its most confident. Plan two to three hours.
Afternoon: Hundertwasserhaus and the MuseumsQuartier
The Hundertwasserhaus on Kegelgasse is a residential apartment building designed by the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, completed in 1986. The exterior is publicly visible from the street at no cost; the KunstHausWien museum nearby shows Hundertwasser’s work properly and costs around €12. The building’s uneven floors, organic forms, and rejection of the straight line are either genuinely radical or performatively eccentric depending on your tolerance for late 20th-century Austrian expressionism.
The MuseumsQuartier complex off the Ringstrasse contains the Leopold Museum (Egon Schiele collection), the MUMOK (Museum of Modern Art), and the Kunsthalle. The central courtyard is a good place to sit, and the Beisl inside is a reasonable option for a late lunch.
Evening: Prater and Farewell
The Prater’s Giant Ferris Wheel (Riesenrad), built in 1897, costs €14.50 for an adult ride. The gondolas are original vintage wood-panelled cabins and the ride takes around 20 minutes for two rotations. It is not a thrill ride; it is a slow, clear view over Vienna and the Danube meadows at dusk. If you have one spare hour in Vienna and haven’t done it, do it now.
For a final drink, a Heuriger (traditional wine tavern) in the outer districts of Grinzing or Nussdorf, a short tram ride from the centre, serves the current year’s local wine by the Viertel (quarter litre) with cold platters of bread, cheese, and cured meat. These operate under Austrian law that restricts them to serving their own production; the setting is usually a garden under a chestnut tree. This is the part of Vienna that no generic tourist itinerary reaches and is worth the 20-minute tram ride.
Visa and Practical Notes
Austria is a Schengen Area member. Citizens of the EU, US, Canada, Australia, and most OECD nations do not require a visa for stays under 90 days; check your specific country’s requirements before travelling. Type F power sockets are standard; bring an adapter if needed. Tipping in restaurants runs 5-10%; leaving nothing on a table in a sit-down restaurant is considered rude rather than neutral.