Vienna sightseeing

The museums, monuments, and sights of Vienna, Austria

Kunsthistoriches Museum - This excellent art collection is one of Vienna's must-sees; it's 100 rooms filled with paintings and sculpture from the Renaissance on (including Rembrandt, Dürer, Vermeer, Titian, rapahael, Carvaggio, and loads of Breughel the Elder), along with ancient Egyptian and Greek art...

Stephansdom (St. Stephan's Cathedral) - Vienna's epicenter is this 12th- to 14th-century church, which has been a visual and cultural landmark for centuries. Inside are some fanciful tombs, a nifty 15th-century carved wooden altar, and a crypt filled with urns containing the entrails of the Hapsburgs. Climb the 450-foot, 343-stepped south tower for a panorama...

Staatsoper (State Opera House) - One of the most important opera houses in the world, Vienna's opulent Staatsoper opened in 1869 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni and has counted Mahler and Richard Strauss among its musical directors...

Schloss Schönbrunn - Vienna's greatest palace lies four miles outside the center. This rococo playground of Empress Maria Theresa was the Hapsburgs' summer palace after its mid-18th century completion. The palace sprawls, but only 40 of its 1,441 rooms are open to the public. There are two audio tours of the gold-leafed, stuccoed, and chandeliered state apartments....

Hofburg Palace - The jumbled complex of Hofburg, started in 1279 and added on to more or less continuously until 1913, was the Hapsburgs' winter home and now houses the Imperial Apartments and a bevvy of small museums, including the Imperial Treasury, arms and armor, classcial statues, and a lovely musical instruments collection...

Akademie der Bildenden Kunste–Gemaldegalerie (Academy of Fine Arts) - If you have time, try to squeeze in this gallery's small but choice collection of paintings spanning the 15th to 17th centuries by Hieronymus Bosch, Van Dyck, Rubens's, Rembrandt, and Cranach the Elder...

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