Vienna Sightseeing: Palace Tickets Sorted
Vienna Sightseeing: Palace Tickets Sorted
Schönbrunn Palace sells four different tour tickets, and picking the wrong one means either rushing past rooms you wanted to see or paying for forty rooms when twenty-two would have done.
Schönbrunn, Tier by Tier
The Imperial Tour (€30) covers 22 rooms from the Franz Joseph and Sisi era. The Grand Tour (€42) adds the Bergl Rooms and the Millions Room for 40 rooms total. The Classic Pass (€49) bundles the palace with garden attractions, and the Sisi Pass (€60) adds the Hofburg’s Sisi Museum and the Imperial Furniture Collection on top. The gardens combo ticket (€16) covers the Gloriette, the maze, the Privy Garden, and the Orangery, though the gardens themselves are free to walk. Entry is timed across the whole site, so book a slot before you arrive rather than queuing for one. Search skip-the-line Schönbrunn tickets on GetYourGuide if you’d rather not book directly.
St. Stephen’s Cathedral
The nave is free to enter. Climbing the south tower, all 343 steps of it, costs around €8, and the catacombs beneath the church only open on guided, half-hour slots. An all-inclusive combo ticket at roughly €18 undercuts paying for the tower and catacombs separately. Check current hours at stephansdom.at before planning around a specific slot.
Hofburg and Belvedere, Two Separate Complexes
The Hofburg’s Sisi Museum Day Ticket, covering the museum, the Imperial Apartments, and the Silver Collection, runs €20 adult, €18 student, €12 child, sold only through imperialtickets.com with a mandatory timed slot. The Imperial Treasury next door is a separate €14 ticket, free under 19, and from April 2026 it also requires its own reserved slot. At the Belvedere, the Upper Palace (€23) holds Klimt’s “The Kiss”; the Lower Palace is €17, Belvedere 21 is €12 standalone, and combined day tickets, a 2-in-1 at €32 and a 3-in-1 at €34, undercut paying for each site alone. Search Belvedere tickets on GetYourGuide covers the guided version of a Belvedere visit.
The Water Past the Old Town
A boat trip sold as a “Danube River cruise” through the historic center is actually on the Donaukanal, the old regulated channel that runs alongside Vienna’s Innere Stadt. The real Danube flows further out past Leopoldstadt and Donaustadt, which is where Donauinsel and river trips toward the Wachau genuinely start.
The MuseumsQuartier and Around
The MuseumsQuartier holds the Leopold Museum, mumok (Vienna’s own museum of modern art), and Kunsthalle Wien, a separate, municipally-run contemporary art venue with its own MuseumsQuartier and Karlsplatz locations. Naschmarkt, the city’s largest market, runs alongside it for lunch between museums. In the evening, the Staatsoper sells standing-room tickets from €13 the day of performance, a cheap way into a building most visitors only see from a guided tour.
For a slower, on-foot version of this same ground, the walking tours guide covers the Innere Stadt in more detail. Buy timed tickets a day or two ahead in high season; Schönbrunn and the Hofburg both sell out their morning slots first.