Escorted Vienna Holidays and Guided Tours
Vienna was the capital of an empire that reached from the Alps to the Carpathians, and it still looks the part. The Ringstrasse follows the line of the old city walls, and along it stand the opera house, the parliament, two vast museums facing each other across a square, and the Hofburg, where the Habsburgs spent their winters.
Our Vienna holidays travel by air and run from four to six days, with a guide who deals with the tickets, the timings and the tram stops. Music runs through most of them: a concert in a proper hall, a composer's rooms, an evening at a Heuriger with a jug of the new wine.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Vienna Tours
Our Vienna holidays travel by air. Return flights and airport transfers are included, and a coach with a driver is used at the destination for the excursions and longer transfers, such as the run from Vienna to the Tyrol. Vienna is a long way by road from the UK, and flying leaves more of a short holiday for the city itself. Departure airports vary by tour and by date, so please ask us.
A fair amount, and some of it on cobbles. The historic centre is compact but best seen on foot, so a walking tour of the old town features on most itineraries, and palaces such as Schönbrunn and the Hofburg involve standing and walking through long enfilades of rooms. Museums have lifts and seating. If stairs or distance are a concern, tell us before you book and we will talk you through the specific tour honestly.
Yes, everything listed on the individual tour page is included in the price. On the Strauss and Mozart holiday that means Category A tickets for the concert at the Wiener Konzerthaus, plus entry to the Johann Strauss Apartment Museum, the House of Music and the Zentralfriedhof. Other tours include the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Schönbrunn and the Spanish Riding School. Check the inclusions on the tour you are looking at, as they differ.
Yes. Any of our Vienna holidays can be run as a private group for a gardening club, U3A branch, church group, choir or simply a large gathering of friends. You choose the dates, we adjust the itinerary where it makes sense, and the group travels together throughout. Pricing depends on group size and the time of year, so contact us with a rough number and a preferred month and we will put figures to it.
You are driven out to one of the wine villages on the edge of Vienna, where growers sell wine from their own vineyards. You sit at a long table, the food comes as a buffet or a served plate of local cooking, and wine and often live music are part of the arrangement. The mood is relaxed and sociable rather than formal. What is included varies by tour, so check the inclusions listed on the page.
No. Your tour has an English-speaking guide throughout, and English is widely spoken in Viennese hotels, restaurants and museums. Museum labelling is generally bilingual and the major galleries offer English audio guides. A few words are always appreciated, and Grüss Gott as a greeting will get you a warm response, but nobody will expect you to manage in German.
The city Strauss and Mozart worked in
Vienna's musical reputation is not a matter of atmosphere. It is a matter of addresses. Johann Strauss the Younger wrote The Blue Danube in an apartment on Praterstrasse, and the rooms are now a small museum of manuscripts, furniture and his own instruments. The House of Music, a few streets from the State Opera, takes the subject apart properly, from the physics of sound to the Vienna Philharmonic's own history.
At the Zentralfriedhof, the honorary graves of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Strauss stand within a few paces of one another, with a monument to Mozart, whose own grave in the St Marx cemetery was never marked.
Our Strauss and Mozart tour ends with a concert at the Wiener Konzerthaus, which opened in 1913 and remains one of the city's serious venues, with Category A tickets included rather than whatever is left at the back.
Imperial palaces and the great galleries
Schönbrunn was the Habsburgs' summer palace, with well over a thousand rooms, formal parterres and the Gloriette on the ridge above the gardens. The Hofburg, in the centre of town, was the winter residence and is still a working seat of government. The scale of both takes a little while to sink in.
Across the Ringstrasse, the Kunsthistorisches Museum holds the largest group of Bruegel paintings anywhere, including Hunters in the Snow and the Tower of Babel, along with Vermeer, Velázquez and the Habsburg collections of curiosities.
At the Spanish Riding School, the Lipizzaner stallions work in a baroque hall built for Charles VI in the 1730s. Whether you see a full performance or the morning exercise depends on the date, and we will tell you which before you book.
Coffee houses and Heuriger evenings
Vienna is one of the few capital cities with commercial vineyards inside its own boundary, several hundred hectares of them on the slopes at Grinzing, Nussdorf and Neustift. Since Joseph II gave growers the right to sell their own wine in 1784, they have done exactly that, in the taverns known as Heuriger.
An evening at one is part of most of our Vienna holidays. Expect long tables, a cold buffet and roast pork, a carafe of Gemischter Satz, and often a pair of musicians working through the old Schrammel tunes.
The coffee houses are the daytime equivalent, and Viennese coffee house culture is on the UNESCO list of intangible heritage for good reason. Order a Melange, take a newspaper from the rack, and nobody will hurry you out of the chair.
Adding Salzburg and the Tyrol
If four days in one city is not quite enough, our six-day Vienna and the Tyrol holiday pairs the capital with the mountains. Three nights in Vienna cover the old town, Schönbrunn, the Spanish Riding School and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, then the tour moves west for two nights near Kitzbühel.
Along the way there is Salzburg, Mozart's birthplace, with the Getreidegasse and the fortress above it. Innsbruck follows, where Maximilian I's extraordinary black-marble cenotaph stands in the Hofkirche surrounded by twenty-eight bronze mourners, and the Golden Roof looks down the old market street.
The itinerary also takes in the Swarovski crystal world at Wattens and Rattenberg, the smallest town in Austria and a glass-cutting centre for centuries. The drive between Vienna and the Tyrol is a genuine change of country, not just of hotel.
