From the Golden Hall to the Hallstatt shore.
Which Mozart night is played by a real orchestra and which is a costume show. Whether the Hallstatt day trip is thirteen hours well spent. What a Fiaker actually costs. Every tour in Austria, reviewed.
Schönbrunn, Hallstatt and the Golden Hall.
A concert under a Baroque dome, the palace before the coach parties arrive, the lake village that fills by ten in the morning. The handful of Austrian days most trips are built around, and the best way to book each one.
The Ringstrasse city: palaces by day, Vivaldi by night.
The Hofburg and its Sisi rooms, the Ferris wheel over the Prater, the white stallions at morning training, and a concert nearly every night in a church or a gilded hall. More of Austria’s bookable days happen here than anywhere else in the country.
Mozart, Vivaldi, and where to actually hear them.
All 63 concerts in Vienna and Salzburg →
Karlskirche with the reflecting pool outside, the Musikverein’s Golden Hall, a Baroque church at eleven dollars a seat. Three ways to spend the same Viennese evening, and they are not equal.
Vivaldi in Karlskirche
The Four Seasons under Fischer von Erlach’s dome, with the pool and the two carved columns waiting outside when you come back out.
Mozart in the Golden Hall
The Musikverein hall the New Year concert is broadcast from. The Mozart programmes play in wig and coat, and the cheapest tiers stand at the back.
Mozart at Mirabell Palace
The Marble Hall where he played for the archbishop, ten minutes from his birthplace. Several programmes put a fortress dinner in front of it.
From Karlskirche to Hallstatt: what fills up first.
Every review →These carry more travellers than anything else in Austria, and each one has a reason it earns a whole day or a whole evening.
1
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Concert in Karlskirche
Listen to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Orchestra 1756 on period instruments in Vienna’s Karlskirche, a 75-minute sound tour of seasons.
From · $40
Read our review →
2
Spanish Riding School Training
from $20
3
Skip-the-cashier-desk-line Giant Ferris Wheel Ride
from $17
4
Schönbrunn Palace & Gardens Skip-the-Line Tour
from $63
5
Light of Creation Votive Church Immersive Light Show
from $25
6
Vienna Spanish Riding School Guided Tour
from $28
7
Classical Concert in the World-Famous Musikverein
from $17
8
Hallstatt Day Trip with Boat Ride Option
from $108
From an $11 church seat to a thirteen-hour Hallstatt day.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. Austria’s best hour is often its cheapest one.
Church concerts, museum tickets, the Innsbruck cable car and the crystal dome at Wattens — Austria at the price of lunch.
Palace tours with a guide, the Mirabell Mozart night, salt-mine tickets and half-day drives into the wine country.
The long days out: Hallstatt and the lakes, Melk and the Wachau, Bratislava or Budapest and back by dinner.
Salzburg is two cities: Mozart’s and the film’s.
Concerts in the Marble Hall where he played for the archbishop, and coaches out to the gazebo, the abbey and the lake the Trapp family was filmed on. The funicular up to the fortress runs over both of them.
In Innsbruck the cable car leaves from the middle of town.
Up to the Nordkette ridge in twenty minutes, canyoning through the Ötztal gorges, a tandem flight off the Stubai slopes, and a crystal dome buried under a grass-covered giant’s head at Wattens.
- 1Swarovski Crystal Worlds Entrance Ticketfrom $27
- 2Tyrolean Evenings Family Gundolf in Innsbruckfrom $45
- 3Top of Innsbruck: Roundtrip Cable Car Ticketfrom $65
Three things Austria never exported.
Palaces and mountain views exist all over Europe. Licensed two-horse cabs, a film tour running since 1965 and seven thousand years of salt do not.
The Fiaker
Vienna’s two-horse cabs are a regulated profession with numbered licences, ranks on Michaelerplatz and Stephansplatz, and drivers who sit an exam on the city’s history before they hold the reins. Half an hour covers the lanes around the Hofburg; the longer rides take the Ring and the canal. Horses stand down in a heatwave, so summer afternoons can be quiet at the rank.
- 130-Minute Fiaker Ride in the Old Town★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,092 reviews
- 2Secrets of the Fiaker & Horse-Drawn Carriage Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 743 reviews
- 3Culinary Horse-Drawn Carriage Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 291 reviews
The Film That Never Left
Salzburg has been driving people to the filming locations for sixty years, and locals still enjoy explaining that Austrians do not grow up with the songs. The route is real geography rather than a set: Leopoldskron’s lake, the Hellbrunn gazebo, the church at Mondsee, and a meadow with the Alps standing behind it.
- 1The Original Sound of Music Tour in Salzburg★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 6,129 reviews
- 2Original Sound of Music Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 5,059 reviews
- 3Hallstatt and Sound of Music Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 522 reviews
The Salt Mines
Salt built Salzburg and named it, and the mines above Hallein and Hallstatt have been worked for around seven thousand years. You change into overalls, ride the miners’ polished wooden slides down through the rock, cross an underground lake in the dark, and come back out on a small train.
- 1Salzwelten Salt Mine Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 641 reviews
- 2Salzburg Super Saver: Original Sound of Music and Salt Mines Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 345 reviews
- 3Hallstatt and Salt Mines Small-Group Tour from Salzburg★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 273 reviews
Four Austrian bookings that will not wait.
Most of Austria can be arranged from the hotel the night before. These four cannot: they run on performance calendars, a mountain road that closes for winter, and a market that lasts five weeks.
- 01Spanish Riding School TrainingThe Lipizzaner mornings and the performances run to a published calendar, and the hall is small. Seats go long before the week arrives.
- 02Skip-the-Line: Eagle’s Nest in Berchtesgaden Tour from SalzburgThe Kehlstein road opens from mid-May to late October only, and the mountain buses are the sole way up.
- 03Christmas Market Vienna TourThe markets run from mid-November to Christmas. Outside those weeks there is nothing standing in the squares.
- 04Classical Concert in the World-Famous MusikvereinThe Golden Hall is smaller than its reputation and the good tiers sell out weeks ahead of the programme date.
A wet afternoon in Vienna is a museum problem.
Alpine weather turns in an hour and the capital gets its grey weeks. Every answer is under a roof: Klimt’s Kiss at the Belvedere, the Kunsthistorisches across from its twin, a chocolate workshop, an hour of Vivaldi in a church, or an hour underground in a salt mine.
Three more capitals, all back in Vienna by dinner.
All day trips from Vienna →Bratislava is an hour down the Danube, Budapest and Prague are long days in a minibus. All three leave Vienna after breakfast and hand you back the same night.
Guided Tour to Bratislava with Speed Boat Ride
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By region — Vienna outwards
Vienna824 tours
Salzburg231 tours
Hallstatt & the lakes123 tours
Innsbruck65 tours
The Tyrol34 tours
Graz15 tours
Linz8 tours- Every review →
Vienna, the Danube, the lakes, then the mountains.
The WachauThe newest Austrian tour reviews.
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Zurich: Private Liechtenstein, Austria, and Germany Day Trip
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Zell am See Kaprun: Private Ski Guiding with Hajo
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World War II History Vienna Old Town Private Walking Tour
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Wachau, Melk Abbey & Salzburg (Sound of Music & UNESCO)
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Villach/Ossiachersee: Paragliding “Action” Tandemflug
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Villach/Ossiachersee: Paragliding “Panorama” Tandemflug
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Vienna/Bratislava: Traunkirchen, Hallstatt & Salzburg Tour
Read our review →
Vienna/Bratislava: Day Trip to Hallstatt & Salzburg
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