Guided Tours
Tours of Vienna and its Surroundings by Andrei Zolotov Jr.
Get inspired by our previous tours!
Vienna and it’s surroundings have so much to offer, it can be overwhelming to decide where to focus on and what to see.
That’s why I tailor every tour to my customers and we plan the tour together. From a quick 3 hour walking tour to the most famous landmarks to a full day of touring for up to 8 people in and around Vienna, I’ll be happy to create an unforgettable experience for you.
For inspiration, I listed a few popular tours below my guests enjoyed in the past. Maybe you’ll find an area of interest we can incorporate in your personal tour.
3-Hour Tours
Please note that these tours are just here to give you some ideas of what Vienna has to offer. Some tours might be a bit shorter or longer as they include cafè visits we do not want to rush.
The Heart of Vienna – St. Stephen’s Cathedral and its immediate surroundings
The Heart of Vienna – St. Stephen’s Cathedral and its immediate surroundings.
One of Europe’s preeminent gothic cathedrals has in fact been evolving from the 12th century to this day and has been reborn several times. It contains mysteries and miracles, objects of living history of Austria and great pieces of art. Its origins are buried under the ground and its tower stands at 136 meters as the most recognizable and beloved symbol of the city.
The Imperial Hofburg Palace and its surroundings.
The Imperial Hofburg Palace and its surroundings.
The tour of this area would greatly benefit from a combination with a visit to the Imperial Treasury, where the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire and its successors – Austrian and Austro-Hungarian Empires are kept. The Treasury is perhaps the best place to explain the history of Austria in brief and I thus highly recommend this place the earlier the better in the course of one’s visit to Austria.
After having seen the Treasury, you will likely see the rest of Vienna from a different perspective. Next door to the Treasury is the magnificent State Hall of the National Library – the breathtaking baroque space containing 200000 volumes which constituted the pride of the Habsburgs. Also there stands the court St. Augustine Church, where the hearts of the Habsburgs are kept. The Hofburg area includes the spacious Heldenplatz (Heros’ Square, alas, best known through Hitler’s triumphal declaration of the Anschluss in March 1938) and small St. Michael Square where the entire history of Vienna from Roman antiquity to modern architecture is represented.
And a block away is the Minoritenkirche, where an amazing mosaic copy of Leonardo’s Last Supper is exhibited.
Two to three hours.
Music in Vienna’s historical center.
Music in Vienna’s historical center.
It is not by coincidence that the Austrian capital prides itself of the informal title of Europe’s musical capital. Music and its history are almost everywhere to be seen in Vienna – a vibrant modern city filled with musical events and institutions. The tour will take you to the buildings connected with the lives of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Schubert to name just a few, tell fascinating stories of their lives, achievements and tragedies. We will also explore the exteriors and histories of great musical institutions such as the Vienna State Opera, Theater an der Wien and Musikverein, offer tips on how to get tickets including standing room, recommend specific performances.
Two to four hours long walking tour or combined with a car/bus.
Vienna as another Rome
Vienna as another Rome
A walking tour through the center of Vienna will summarize the rich history and amazing beauty of this city and try to convey the unique spirit of this place. We will start from the area where ancient Romans had founded Vindobona as a military garrison on the border of their Empire, were in the Middle Ages lucrative salt trade took place and where later the inner city’s Jewish and Greek quarters emerged. From there we will walk to the sumptuous Hofburg Palace, where the Holy Roman Emperors of Renaissance and Baroque resided and where some crucial events of the European history well into the 20th century took place.
On the way, we will see the soaring gothic St. Steven Cathedral and other beautiful churches, the residence of Teutonic Knights, which they continue to own since 1206, Mozart’s house (probably more than one of them) and cozy cafes. We will also learn how the Ringstrasse boulevard was built in the second half of the 19th century thus creating the modern look of the city and how Viennese Jugendstil/Modern architecture and art burst onto the scene at the tumultuous turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Duration of the walking tour: 3 hours. A coffee break in a historical café is an option.
Central Cemetery
The Central Cemetery.
By the number of people buried here – more than three million – Vienna’s Central Cemetery (Zentralfriedhof) is Europe’s biggest burial site. It is almost twice as large as today’s population of the city, while the sheer size and the interdenominational structure of the cemetery by themselves represent Vienna’s modernization in the late 19th century. During a three-hour-walk through this magnificent necropolis we will visit the graves of great composers and artists, politicians and doctors, scientists and industrialists who influenced Austria and Europe at large over more than two centuries.
We will also see the memorials to the victims of wars and uprisings that shook this country and learn more about the history of Austria than many other city tours could offer. We will complete the tour at the Old Jewish Section of the cemetery, which stands as a monument to the nearly annihilated civilization of Viennese Jewry.
Walking tour, 3 hours. As an alternative, it is very pleasant to tour the Central Cemetery by bicycle.
Within the Borders of Roman Vindobona.
Within the Borders of Roman Vindobona. History of religion, art and trade in the Jewish and Greek quarters of Vienna with their churches and the central synagogue, the High Market as the historic city center dating back to the Roman era (as testified by the Roman Museum based on excavations there), Jesuits with their magnificent church and the university, the dramatic history of the Jewish Square (Judenplatz) and the square Am Hof – the site of Austria’s initial rulers, the Babenberg Dynasty’s first residence in Vienna, the square of the papal visits, Mozart’s first concert and the Revolution of 1848.
2 to 3 hours.
Jewish Vienna
Jewish Vienna.
Once one of the capitals of Euroepan Jewry, Vienna is the scene of dramatic history of Jewish prosperity and demise, extermination and revival, integration and alienation. The tour will take you from the Ringstrasse – the splendid monument to the 19th century emancipation of Jewish entrepreneurs – to Judenplatz, where the medieval Jewish community of Vienna had been violently annihilated in 1420, and from the Jewish quarter with the city’s only synagogue that survived the November pogroms of 1938 to Leopoldstadt – once predominantly Jewish quarter of Vienna dotted by numerous “stumbling stones” marking lost Jewish lives.
A pedestrian tour, two to three hours long.
The Orders in Vienna
The Orders in Vienna.
Traces of military and religious orders, of knights and monks, transpire the historical fabric of Vienna. Moreover, this is a city, where the orders are very much alive and visible today too. The gigantic House of Teutonic Knights stands next door to St. Steven’s Cathedral on the land plot donated to the knights as far back as 1206. Since 1809 it houses the official residence of the Grand Master. Across a small street, known as Blutgasse, or Blood Lane, stand centuries-old buildings believed to have once housed the Knights Templar.
The marvelous renaissance cum baroque Franciscan church, part of a functioning monastery, is home to the city’s oldest organ and a revered statue of Our Lady. Not far away reformed Franciscans known as Capuchin Friars are the custodians of the Tomb of the Emperors. Across the old town, Jesuits and Dominicans – once major forces of the Counter-Reformation, neighbor each other in their magnificent churches and monasteries.
Walking tour, 3 hours.
Ringstrasse
Ringstrasse is the main street of the late Habsburg Empire that formed the modern image of Vienna. An exhibition of wealth and beauty, the birthplace of the Viennese Jugenstil and a monument to the emancipation of haute bourgeoisie. Here you find some of the city’s most stunning buildings such as the Opera, Parliament, City Hall and Otto Wagner’s Post Bank, as well as fascinating stories such as Gustav Klimt’s turn to modernism while working on paintings for the University building, and the life of Katharina Schratt – a great actress turned intimate friend of Emperor Francis Joseph.
Three hours on foot and tram plus 30 minutes in a café, without which Ringstrasse is hard to understand.
Otto Wagner
Otto Wagner and his pupils.
A combination of bus and pedestrian tour of the main buildings of Viennese Jugendstil will immerse you into the unique atmosphere of Vienna at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire became one of the most advanced laboratories of modern art and architecture. Otto Wagner (1841-1918) was always at the cutting edge of progressive trends. We will see how he moved from historicism to decorative early modernism and then on to late modernism, finessing the pure geometrical forms of his last buildings. The tour will take you to from the central Graben street to the Ringstrasse, where you’ll see his famous Postal Savings Bank.
We won’t bypass the iconic Secession building designed by Wagner’s pupil Joseph Olbrich and the buildings on Linke Wienzeile marking the Secession period in Wagner’s oeuvre. We will see the city railway which he artistically curated, and the Church on Steinhof , which the great architect considered to be his masterpiece. We will finish our tour at the edge of the Vienna Forest, where two villas that Wagner had built for himself mark two different periods of his heritage.
Three to four hours.
Half Day & Full Day Tours
Please note that these tours are just here to give you some ideas of what Vienna has to offer.
Up the Danube
Up the Danube. The Imperial Monastery of Klosterneuburg – the cradle of the Austrian state housing the relics of St. Leopold, the patron saint of Vienna and Lower Austria, and the crown of the Dukes of Austria. Klosterneuburg offers a sprawling magnificent complex of Romanesque church and Baroque monastery-cum-palace spanning 12th to 19th centuries, a small treasury of exquisite artifacts, the Verdun Altar – one of Europe’s most important masterpieces of medieval goldsmith art, a collection of old and modern paintings and an excellent winery.
From there, we would go, passing the village of Zeiselmauer, in which several ancient Roman buildings are well preserved, to the picturesque and historical town of Tulln. The site of some ancient Roman buildings also has one of Central Europe’s best Romanesque 12th century rotunda and a typical Austrian town square. The town is the birthplace of one of Austria’s greatest artists, Egon Schiele (1890 – 1918) and has two museums dedicated to him – one at the apartment at the train station where he spent his childhood and another in a former prison on the bank of the Danube.
The town also prides itself in its gardens. One of Austria’s best restaurants near Tulln is also an option.
Half a day to full day.
The sacred Heiligenkreuz and Mayerling.
The sacred Heiligenkreuz and tragic Mayerling. The Holy Cross Abbey in the Vienna Woods (Stift Heiligenkreuz in Wienerwald) is a Cistercian monastery which counts some 900 years of uninterrupted history and is today one of Europe’s largest by the number of monks. It is a site of a unique monastery church, dating back to the 11th and 14th century, with distinct Romanesque and Gothic parts, and a stunning 14th century cloister. The Latin language and Gregorian chant of the Heiligenkreuz church services make a visitor get completely lost in time. Just 5 km away is Mayerling – a former hunting lodge known as a site of the double suicide – of the Crown Prince Rudolf, the only son of Emperor Francis Joseph and Empress Elisabeth (Sisi), and his young lover, Maria Vetsera. The tragedy became the subject of numerous rumors, conspiracy theories and world famous artistic projects – from the Terence Young movie starring Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve, to the Kenneth MacMillan ballet. Today it is a Carmelite Closter with a part of it open to the public as a museum.
Half a day trip including a lunch or dinner at the monastery’s excellent restaurant.
For a full day trip to the Vienna Woods, add Baden bei Wien – a resort dating back to the Ancient Romans, Baden bei Wien, the Liechtenstein Castle in Maria Enzersdorf (a romantic 19th century reconstruction of the princely family’s original medieval home), or Seegrotte — Europe’s largest underground lake in a former gypsum mine (turned Nazi concentration camp and eventually a tourist attraction). In that case, it would be a full day trip.
The Wachau Valley
The Wachau Valley –natural beauty and cultural wealth of the Danube gem. The Wachau Valley, a 40-kilometer-long stretch of the Danube from Melk to Krems 80 km west of Vienna is one of Europe’s most beautiful places. The entire valley is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Famous monasteries and castles, including the one where Richard the Lion Heart was kept as a prisoner, romantic landscapes, beautiful vineyards and excellent vines bring here lots of tourists. But somehow it is never crowded.
In the winter time the vine taverns and some museums are closed, but monasteries remain open and accessible. Some people believe that Wachau can be visited only on a warm sunny day in spring or summer, but I am convinced that Wachau is beautiful in any season and weather – it is always different. Besides some of the most stunning churches in Europe, like that of the Melk or Göttweig Abbeys, good places to eat and drink are always to be found here. Wine tasting on a boat can be organized during the navigation season.
A trip to the Wachau Valley takes from half a day (dense but possible) to a full day.
The Austro-Hungarian Borderland.
The Austro-Hungarian Borderland. The picturesque town of Rust has the status of free city dating back to the 15th century, but numbers less than 2000 inhabitants. Situated on the bank of the Lake Neusiedlersee, it is the center of wine-making in Burgenland – Austria’s easternmost constituent land, which had been part of Hungary prior to 1921. Almost every house in Rust is a 300- to 500-year old winery. Almost each of them has a stork nest on the roof making Rust a “stork town”. A trip to Rust – something that many Austrians enjoy and where they love to bring their guests of honor – is easily combinable with a trip across the border to nearby Sopron – modern Hungary’s town nearest to Vienna.
A romantic city dating back to ancient Roman times has a remarkably preserved historical center with buildings of 13th century onwards and parts of the city fortress which remained intact here. The dramatic history of Burgenland as a result of the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire also unfolds during this trip. The city has an excellent Hungarian restaurant offering great food for a meager price.
Half a day to a full day.
The Historical Road to Pressburg.
The Historical Road to Pressburg. Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia with its austere castle and charming city center, had been better known for most of its history by its German name Pressburg or Hungarian name Pozsony and was de facto Vienna’s eastern outpost. On the road to Bratislava, which takes less than an hour if you drive directly, lies Carnuntum – the capital of the Ancient Roman province Pannonia Superiora.
Parts of its excavations have been reconstructed to full Roman houses. The present-day village of Petronell-Carnuntum is also a home to a beautiful 12th century Romanesque rotunda church and a magnificent Renaissance castle of Counts von Abensperg und Traun. Nearby is the village of Rohrau – the birthplace of composers Josef und Michael Haydn, whose house is now a museum. Haydn’s parents worked in the castle of the Counts of Harrach. Their castle in Rohrau houses today the amazing collection of mainly Spanish and Neapolitan baroque paintings by masters such as Solimena, Giordano, Murillo and others. Further down the Danube is the heroic fortress town of Hainburg and the hill Braunsberg above it, offering a breathtaking view of the Danube and its surroundings, including Bratislava.
A walk through the Slovakian capital and a dinner in one of its restaurants can well complete the impression of the day.
A full day tour.
