Vienna City Guide
Imperial, musical and always worth a coffee. St. Stephen's Cathedral and its colourful tiled roof rise over Vienna's old town, around it the Hofburg, the grand buildings of the Ringstraße and the palaces of Schönbrunn and Belvedere with Klimt's Kiss. Ready-made routes take the planning off your hands.
🗺️ Open Vienna interactively with map & navigation4 walking routes in Vienna · Premium
4 hand-picked walking routes from the U-Bahn take you compactly to the highlights of Vienna, with map and step-by-step navigation in the app. These routes are part of Short Trips Premium.
Innere Stadt als kaiserliches Zentrum
Day one explores the imperial heart of Vienna, the Gothic St. Stephen's Cathedral with its colourful tiled roof, the Graben promenade with the Baroque Plague Column, the sprawling Habsburg Hofburg and the wide Heldenplatz. On to the Albertina museum with Monet, Klimt and Picasso and to the world-famous Vienna State Opera.
Ring, Museen & Kirchen-Fotospots
Day two follows the grand Ring, from the Baroque Karlskirche with its dome, over the bustling Naschmarkt and the gold-crowned Art Nouveau Secession building into the MuseumsQuartier. On to Maria-Theresien-Platz between the twin buildings of the great museums, the Greek-style Parliament, the neo-Gothic City Hall and the Votivkirche with its twin towers.
Zwei Schlösser, Schönbrunn & Belvedere
Day three is devoted to two imperial palaces, the immense summer palace Schönbrunn with its extensive Baroque garden and the Gloriette on the hill with the finest view back, and Belvedere Palace, whose Upper Belvedere houses Gustav Klimt's world-famous Kiss.
Prater & Donau (Halbtag)
An optional half day to round off, with the Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel in the Prater, a landmark of 1897, for a leisurely ride high above the city, plus the red brick castle of the Franz von Assisi Church on Mexikoplatz by the Danube. On to the river, to Copa Beach on the Donauinsel with sand and bars, and the modern skyline of Donau City with the DC Tower.
Practical information for Vienna
Public transport
Operator. Wiener Linien operates the public transport network of subway, tram, and bus within the city limits. Tickets are valid within the Verkehrsverbund Ost-Region (VOR), which also covers Lower Austria and Burgenland. For stays within the city, the Vienna core fare zone is enough, a separate ticket is only needed for trips into the surrounding area.
Network. Five U-Bahn lines, a very dense tram network and buses. The annual pass is famously cheap; visitors want the 24-hour ticket.
Modes of transport. Subway · Tram · Bus
Operating hours. The public transport network runs for almost twenty hours on most days. How long the last train or bus on a given line runs is shown in real time for that connection in the WienMobil app.
Night service. Vienna has one of the densest night transport networks in Europe. Every night the Nightline buses run, recognizable by the N before the line number, such as N25, N60, or N66. They run every 30 minutes and cover the city area comprehensively. On the nights before Saturday, Sunday, and public holidays, the night subway also runs, with subway trains running every 15 minutes through until the start of daytime service. In practice this means that on Friday and Saturday nights you can get home by subway, while on ordinary weeknights the Nightline buses take over once regular service ends. A spot check in the official timetable system confirms this picture. On the night before Saturday, the U1 ran at Wien Hauptbahnhof station at 2.07 am, 2.13 am, 2.22 am, and 2.28 am, while on a Wednesday night at the same time only the Nightline bus N66 ran, at 2.09 am, 2.39 am, and 3.09 am. Night tickets are the same as daytime ones, no surcharge applies. A dedicated night network map is available as a PDF on the Wiener Linien timetable page under the title Nightline.
Buying tickets. Purchase works in three ways. Online in the ticket shop at wienmobil.at, on mobile via the WienMobil app for iOS and Android, or in person at Wiener Linien customer centers around the city.
App and payment. WienMobil is the official Wiener Linien app. It bundles timetable information, route planning, and ticket purchase for iOS and Android in a single application and can be reached through the app stores as well as via wienmobil.at.
Which ticket. Wiener Linien offers a tiered range. Single tickets for individual trips, the 24 Stunden WIEN and 7 Tage WIEN as time passes with a flexible start, the 31 Tage WIEN for longer stays, and the Jahreskarte WIEN valid for 365 days. There are also discounted youth tickets and the youth annual pass. On January 1, 2026, Wiener Linien reformed its fare structure and in the process scrapped all 48- and 72-hour tickets, including the corresponding tourist passes. For a two- or three-day stay, Wiener Linien has since recommended the 24-hour ticket or the 7-day pass outright.
Fare zones. For stays within the city of Vienna, the Vienna core fare zone of the Verkehrsverbund Ost-Region is enough. Trips into the surrounding area in Lower Austria or Burgenland need a separate VOR ticket.
Tip. Tram lines 1 and 2 run the length of the Ringstraße for an ordinary fare.
Links
Getting there
Main station
Location. A central through station since 2014, complemented by Westbahnhof and Meidling.
Long-distance trains. Wien Hauptbahnhof is Austria's central long-distance hub and the only Vienna station where all the main routes meet. Within Austria, Railjet, Railjet Xpress, and Intercity trains run at close intervals to Salzburg, Linz, Wels, Graz, Villach, and onward to Innsbruck, Feldkirch, and Bregenz. Internationally there are daytime connections to, among others, Munich, Zurich, Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw. At night, Nightjet and Euronight trains start and end here, for example toward Warsaw, Przemyśl, Munich, Berlin, Zurich, and Venice, plus the Nightjet destinations in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Besides ÖBB, Westbahn and RegioJet also serve the station, both with their own counters in the hall. The train to Vienna Airport also departs from here, usually twice an hour. Onward travel is easy, with U1, tram, bus, and S-Bahn right outside the door.
Opening hours. It's not round-the-clock here. The last long-distance train leaves around 11.20 pm, a Railjet follows at 12.28 am, and the first departs shortly before 5 am. The waiting room is open daily from 4 am to 1.30 am, the ÖBB counter from 5.45 am to 10.30 pm.
Airports
Into the city. The City Airport Train runs every thirty minutes, from the airport 6.07 am to 11.37 pm, from Wien Mitte 5.37 am to 11.07 pm, including public holidays.
Frequency. Every 30 minutes, daily including public holidays.
Local quirks
- The coffeehouse is a living room. One cup buys you hours. Newspapers are laid out, and rushing anyone is considered bad form.
- Speedboat to Bratislava. The Twin City Liner runs on the Danube in around 75 minutes from Vienna straight to the Slovak capital Bratislava, making a day trip to the neighboring country possible without a car or train transfer.
- Long-distance bus station right on the subway. The Vienna International Busterminal in Erdberg, with around 1.9 million passengers a year, is Austria's largest long-distance bus station and sits directly on the U3, with long-distance buses to Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, Zagreb, Krakow, or Amsterdam departing with no detour to the edge of the city.
Good to know
- Currency
- EUR €
- Emergency number
- 112
- Plug type
- C · F
- Time zone
- Europe/Vienna
- Driving
- right
Speed limits. built-up areas 50 km/h, outside towns 100 km/h, motorway 130 km/h
Unlike in Germany, motorways have a fixed 130 km/h limit throughout, there are no unrestricted stretches. The 100 km/h rural limit is among the highest in the EU, only Germany and a few Irish roads allow the same.
Tipping. Five to ten percent, rounded up when paying.
Tolls. Motorways and expressways require a vignette, digital or as a sticker. Individual tunnels and passes carry an extra toll.
Access restrictions. Individual sections and cities have bans by emission class, signposted as IG-L routes.