Location: Vienna
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10 Museums in Vienna That You Shouldn't Miss
In Vienna, the coffee house isn’t just a hangout: it’s an institution. Lingering over a newspaper with a pastry and a strong espresso drink is, according to UNESCO, officially a Viennese cultural pastime. Walk off your slice of Sachertorte with a self-guided tour of the city’s stunning traditional, Secessionist, and modern architecture, such as the Imperial Palace, the State Opera House, the Kirche am Steinhof, or the Kunsthistorisches Museum, an exercise in ornate geometry.
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1. The Third Man Museum
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 612 reviews
OPEN EVERY SATURDAY 2 - 6 pm! OPEN AGAIN from June 13, 2020 onwards!!! For more opening hours check our webpage ! The THIRD MAN MUSEUM is THE place to go but ONLY for film fans and all those interested in the post-war history of Vienna. Private museum without sponsors and without subsidies, but a 100% passion! The Third Man Museum contains much heart and soul. And you can feel it! EXCLUSIVE guided tours on any day of the week by request!
Reviewed By 163059
A must for film buffs and lovers of "The Third Man" film. Only open Saturdays 2-6 and most certainly worth a visit if your time in Vienna allows. Easy to get to - from Vienna Opera take bus 59A, 3 stops to Pressgasse, then 150m walk. Fabulous displays of film posters, photos, audio and video clips of scenes, characters etc. Copies of film scripts and a short piece of original film shown on a pre-war projector. Comprehensive display of photos, posters, newspapers etc of pre war Vienna and the city during and after WW2. Thanks to Gerhard and Karin for the time and effort they have put into creating this fabulous museum (Great to meet you both - Rob and Marg, Melbourne, Australia)
2. Natural History Museum (Naturhistorisches Museum)
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 4,921 reviews
The highlights of this natural history museum include a significant collection of dinosaur skeletons and meteorites in addition to a large display of insects from around the world.
Reviewed By luciabQ3391WN - Bratislava, Slovakia
The museum has a huge collection ranging from minerals and gems (one of the greatest collections I have ever seen) to insects, meteorites and animals! A big advantage is a restaurant on the 1st floor where you can enjoy a nice lunch or cake surrounded by these beautiful walls. Really worth the money (12EUR entry fee for adults)
3. Ernst Fuchs Museum
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 84 reviews
A collection of private works by one of Austria's greatest 20th-century artists and architects.
Reviewed By svitlanao335 - Vienna, Austria
As a great fan of Otto Wagner i have visited this museum already twice. Be ready to immerse in Art Nouveau (Jugendstil or Secession or Modern or Liberty or Tiffany are the same names) style. Fantastic stained glass, golden floral decoration, roman-style bath and swimming pool, all this will make you fall in love in one of the Wagners masterpieces. Visit it 100% if you have more than 1 day in Vienna because its located far away from the city center.
4. The Hofburg
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 12,521 reviews
For centuries the Vienna Hofburg was the centre of the Habsburg empire. Today the palace houses three museums which afford historically authentic insights into the traditions and everyday life of the imperial court: The Imperial Apartments with their original furnishings and decoration, the Sisi Museum with its sensitive staging of the empress' life, and the Imperial Silver Collection which contains a comprehensive range of tableware and other utensils used at the imperial court.
Reviewed By GoalieMarty - Ottawa, Canada
We took the Hofburg Vienna ticket which includes the Silver Collection, the Sisi Museum, and the Imperial Apartments with an included audio guide. We bought our tickets on the spot and did not even wait one minute in line. Not sure if it's always like that though. The visit starts with the Silver Collection. Lots and lots of everything you can possibly find on a table. For me, it was nice to see but I got a little bored at the end because I found there was too much and it gets somewhat overwhelming. The audio guide is also a bit dry in my opinion. "Exhibit 24: This silverware collection was designed by Italian master Giovanni Macaroni in 1829 for the visit of King Stradivarius IV who spent 2 weeks at the palace with his court, and bla-bla-bla ...". You get the idea. If you want to save time, I would suggest you skip the dishes. Or at least, don't listen to everything in the audio guide. The visit continues with the Sisi Museum which I found really interesting because it's about her life and all the people in it. Really well made and really well presented. The audio guide is also much more interesting this time around. The Imperial Apartments, the last third of the visit, are truly magnificent. You can feel the opulence and the wealth of this family. The audio guide is again very informative. Both the museum and the apartments are worth spending a little more time in there to take it all in. Overall, we really enjoyed our visit of the Imperial Palace. We also visited Schönbrunn Palace and based on our experience, I would recommend the following. If you want to visit both, start with the Imperial Palace first as Schönbrunn is even more grandiose. If you only have time for one, I would recommend Schönbrunn.
5. Kunst Haus Wien - Museum Hundertwasser
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 1,561 reviews
EXPERIENCE HUNDERTWASSER UP CLOSE: Art - Achitecture - Nature - Vision Two intriguing museums experiences await the visitors at the KUNST HAUS WIEN. The Museum Hundertwasser presents the world's biggest collection of Austrian exceptional artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928 -2000): his world famous paintings, fine art prints, tapestries and architectural designs. Here you can immerse yourself in his imaginative world of art inside and out - colorful walls and uneven floors in the interior, the artistic façade with tiles and color fields on the outside. "Tree tenants" grow from the windows, plants and flowers inhabit the rooftop and inner courtyard. In Vienna's first "green museum" one can sense Hundertwasser's visionary mind and experience his ecological engagement on site. Beyond that the KUNST HAUS WIEN is Vienna's premier house for photography exhibitions: changing exhibitions introduce the biggest names of photography to a wide audience.
Reviewed By sandesha577 - Vienna, Austria
two levels of Hundertwasser architecture and paintings exhibition, and temporarily changing photografic exhibitions , as well as a nice coffee shop in the Hundertwasser style, afterward, some Hundertwasser building blocks just in walking distance are also to be admired....
6. MAK - Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 561 reviews
Discover the fascinating era of “VIENNA 1900” in the grand museum building on Vienna’s Ringstraße with art nouveau masterpieces of the Wiener Werkstätte by Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, or Koloman Moser. Inaugurated in 1871, the building by Heinrich von Ferstel is one of the grandest works of architecture on Vienna’s Ringstraße. Today the MAK, originally founded as the “Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry”, accommodates a unique collection of precious art and craftwork from the fields of furniture, glass, porcelain, silver, and textiles from the middle ages to today. With more than 1 million objects and printed works it is one of the most important museums of its kind in the world. The spacious exhibition rooms were designed by contemporary artists and show selected highlights of the MAK Collection as well as temporary exhibitions in the field of design, art and architecture.
Reviewed By SusanWms - Santa Fe, United States
This museum has a magnificent collection of objects from the mid-19th century forward (when the school was founded). The collections are mainly organized typologically/chronologically, e.g. chairs, tables, glass table wares, porcelain, silver, textiles, etc., but there was a major interpretive exhibit running while we were there—“Vienna 1900.” Vienna was a hotbed of reformist ideas about decorative and applied eta—resulting in the Wiener Werkstadt and the Vienna Secessionist movement. Labels are clear and each gallery has a booklet with English translations of object labels. We spent three hour happily perusing the collections and then retreated to the excellent gift shop featuring a well-curated assortment of well-designed goods.
7. Central Cemetery (Zentralfriedhof)
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 1,606 reviews
Europe's second largest cemetery marks the final resting place for over 2.5 million people, including Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Strauss.
Reviewed By TsarShishman - Sofia, Bulgaria
An unique place where some of the most influential people in the world were buried - musicians, politicians, painters, artists, philanthropist, scientists, engineers and so on... You can spend the whole day in this marvellous place watching the beautiful monuments and learning more with the audioguide.
8. Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 9,709 reviews
Experience one of the world's foremost museums! Let yourself be enchanted by works spanning five millennia, from Ancient Egypt to the modern era. Experience unique major works by Dürer, Raphael, Titian and Velázquez as well as the world's largest collection of Bruegel paintings, all in a magnificent setting. The Kunstkammer Vienna, featuring the famous Saliera by Benvenuto Cellini, is a veritable universe of art and beauty guaranteed to transform any visit into an unforgettable experience. Included in the ticket are the collections at the Neue Burg on the opposite side of Vienna's Ringstrasse. Here you will see the instruments used by the great composers and be transported back to chivalrous times when knights held sway and tourneys and hunting shaped courtly life.
Reviewed By Ina5555 - Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine
The museum was the main goal of my Vienna visit, but I never expected it to be such an excellent introduction into the city and palaces sculptures' motifs as well, underscoring how much power was assigned back then to the art as a means of ideological visual education. Having spent 1,5 days in the museum I have made plenty of personal discoveries and enjoyed new for me artworks (e.g. unexpected parallel to the modern popular mass culture is a 1524 'Arya Stark' self-portrait bearing uncanny resemblance, in fact Parmigianino's enchanting masterpiece). The discoveries haven't stopped after the museum visit ended, because the next day during sightseeing I realized I recognize many of the city and its palaces sculptures' motifs and whatever I used to know about the big name old masters the most influential of them in Vienna must be Luca Giordano's The Fall of the Rebel Angels, whenever I saw its impressive replicated Laocoon-like convulsion-wriggled figures conveying the ideals of Counter-Reformation to the empire subjects on the city streets. Just walking the city you can recognize in the city sculptures' many familiar motifs, not only Biblical but antique as well (Hercules lifting Antaeus, Amazons, etc). Practicalities of the museum visit: the air-conditioning wasn't felt at all in the big inner rooms with Roman numerals, I slightly felt it in the small outer rooms with Arabic numerals (as of 14th and 15th of July). Six or seven rooms were entirely closed for reconstruction during my two-day visit. For lockers you need either a 1 or 2 euro coin, but there's a manned storage facility as well. Backpacks have to be left in a locker, normal shoulder bags are OK. Photo of the permanent exhibition without a flash is allowed. Temporary exhibition: Yan van Eyck "Als Ich Can". Probably I somehow unfortunately missed it. In the room dedicated to the special exhibition (0.5 floor, the same floor as the Kunstkammer, Egyptian and Antique collections - beware indeed almost no English translations of the exhibits, an audio guide cannot make up for all of them; the Egyptian rooms maintain specific humidity level) I saw only few works by the painter, and few works by his contemporaries like Rogier van der Weyden. The museum building (as well as the whole square) is a stunning art object in its own right, specifically built to showcase the Habsburg art treasuries, its highlights are covered by audio guide, including Klimt, Munkacsy contributions. Seeing the interiors I couldn't help but felt as the Mask film protagonist having to recover my awestruck jaw from the floor. Really a mind-boggling shrine of a high art which symbols and messages are probably half-obscure nowadays.
9. Albertina
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 6,819 reviews
Situated in the very heart of Vienna's City center, the Albertina houses one of the most important art collections of the world. Founded in 1776, the Museum today owns masterpieces by Da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Duerer, Rembrandt etc. These collections are presented in temporary exhibitions. The Batliner Collection "From Monet to Picasso" is permanentely on display and shows the most important works by artists from the age of modernism. The Habsburg Historic Staterooms of the Albertina give an air of Imperial glamour.
Reviewed By iioannis2 - Limassol City, Cyprus
Let yourself be attracted and inspired by classical and modern art of famous painters like Picasso and Rubens, as well as admiring memorable vividness painting scenes of the A' World War and medieval personalities, along with modern pieces of painting of abstract art. You will also enter at luxurious furnished coloured rooms taking you back at classical eras and rooms decorated with Greek status like the 9 muses and Apollon (usually their names are written in Greeks). I was impressed that most of the visitors are young people even if the ticket could be considered a bit expensive. But the cost deserves for those who look for such cultural exhibitions. When an exhibit (eg a painting) impresses you, read the small label in the wall next to it and then let your imagination be absorbed looking at the painting, enjoying it as an excellent creation and experiencing in your though what it represents. This is the best place for this purpose!
10. Heeresgeschichtliches Museum
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 1,519 reviews
The Museum of Military History, one of the most important history museums in the world, is situated right in the centre of the Arsenal. About five-hundred years of Austrian and European History are depicted in the collections exhibited in the main building, which has kept its character of an artistic synthesis, making visible, by means of thousands of original exhibits, a part of world cultural heritage. In five major sections the museum shows the history of the Habsburg empire from the end of the 16th century until 1918 and Austria's fate after the dissolution of the monarchy up to the year 1945.
Reviewed By Nasuella - Tel Aviv, Israel
The museum has very rich and detailed exposition which speaks of Austrian military history and shows the progress of Austrian (and European) military uniform and equipment from a Renaissance period to WWII. Great if you're into the subject.If you're not- don't bother.
