Vienna off the beaten path: what to see beyond the imperial circuit
Vienna’s tourist circuit is well-defined: Schönbrunn, Hofburg, Belvedere, Stephansdom, Musikverein concert. These are genuinely excellent and genuinely visited by most of the city’s 17 million annual visitors. The things below are not secret (nothing in Vienna is truly secret), but they are significantly less crowded and, in several cases, more unusual than the standard highlights.
The Zentralfriedhof: Vienna’s most underrated sight
The Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery, 11th district, entrance Simmeringer Hauptstrasse 234) is the second largest cemetery in the world by area (2.5 km²) and contains the graves of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Johann Strauss II, and Hugo Wolf. It also contains a fake grave of Mozart (he was buried in a mass grave at St. Marx cemetery, 20 minutes from here by tram — the Zentralfriedhof has an honorary memorial stone).
The musicians are all in Group 32A, in a garden of honour near the second gate. The cemetery is also the location of the Karl Borromäus Kirche — Max Hegele’s extraordinary 1908 Art Nouveau/Secession church at the center of the cemetery, one of the best Jugendstil buildings in Vienna and almost entirely unknown to visitors.
Take tram 6 or 71 from Schwarzenbergplatz to Zentralfriedhof (30 minutes). The cemetery is free to enter and open daily.
Otto Wagner’s Vienna: the city he built
Otto Wagner (1841–1918) redesigned Vienna’s public architecture at the turn of the 20th century. His buildings are scattered across the city and almost entirely overlooked by the standard tourist circuit.
Postsparkasse (Postal Savings Bank, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1st district) — the 1904–1912 building that is one of the key buildings of European modernism. The glass-and-steel banking hall is open during banking hours (free). The exterior, clad in marble slabs bolted in place with visible aluminum bolts, was scandalous in 1904 and extraordinary now.
Stadtbahn stations — Wagner designed the entire Vienna Stadtbahn (now the U-Bahn/urban railway) infrastructure from 1894–1901. The Jugendstil station pavilions at Karlsplatz (the most photographed, now a museum — Otto Wagner Museum) and Kettenbrückengasse are the best preserved. You pass through Wagner architecture every time you take the U4 or U6.
Steinhof Church (Baumgartner Höhe 1, 14th district) — built 1905–1907 as the church for the Steinhof psychiatric hospital. The interior (Koloman Moser mosaics, Jugendstil stained glass by Moser and Rudolf Jettmar) is one of the great interiors in Vienna and almost entirely unknown to visitors outside the architecture community. Tours run on Saturdays; arrive early.
Hundertwasserhaus: controversial and worth seeing
The Hundertwasserhaus (Kegelgasse 36–38, 3rd district) is an apartment building designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser in 1985 — onion-dome towers, uneven floors, tree-grown terraces, brightly coloured tiles, no straight lines. The Viennese city authorities and the building’s architect disagreed about nearly everything, and the building’s residents allegedly have mixed feelings about living in an art object.
It is not open to the public (people live there), but the exterior is fully visible from the street and is a 20-minute walk from the Belvedere. The Kunsthaus Wien (Untere Weißgerberstrasse 13, 3rd district), also designed by Hundertwasser, is a museum showing his paintings and architectural models — open to visitors.
The 9th district: Freud, Schubert, and the university
The 9th district (Alsergrund) is a neighbourhood of apartment buildings, university departments, and coffee houses that visitors almost never reach. It contains:
Freud Museum Vienna (Berggasse 19) — the apartment where Sigmund Freud lived and worked from 1891 until fleeing the Nazis in 1938. The consulting room furniture (the original couch is in London at the Freud Museum Maresfield Gardens) is not here; but the rooms are, and the atmosphere of a professional apartment from the turn of the century is remarkably intact. Entry 14 €.
Schubert Birthplace (Nussdorfer Strasse 54) — the two-room apartment where Franz Schubert was born in 1797. A small museum. Entry 5 €.
Vienna General Hospital (Altes AKH, 9th district) — the former general hospital (1784) is now the university campus, but the baroque courtyard complex (which contained the world’s first maternity ward and one of the first systematic clinical education systems) is open to the public. Worth 30 minutes.
Nussdorf: Vienna’s wine village in the city
Nussdorf (19th district, tram D from the Ring) is one of Vienna’s Heuriger villages — the vineyards begin 20 minutes by tram from Stephansdom. In summer and autumn, the Heurigen (wine taverns) are open when the green pine branch hangs above the door, serving their estate wines and cold buffets.
Heuriger Mayer am Pfarrplatz (Pfarrplatz 2) — open year-round, larger than most, excellent Riesling from their own vineyards. Beethoven spent a summer here in 1817 and composed in the garden.
Heuriger Sirbu (Kahlenbergerstrasse 210) — smaller, family-run, terrace with views over the Danube, outstanding estate Grüner Veltliner.
The walk from the Nussdorf tram stop up through the Kahlenberg neighbourhood (following the vineyard paths) to the Heuriger takes 30–40 minutes and is the most pleasant walk reachable by public transport from central Vienna.
The Naschmarkt on a Tuesday
This has been mentioned in other contexts but deserves its own note: the Naschmarkt on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning (not Saturday, not Thursday when the morning rush has depleted the stock) is a real neighbourhood market operating as Vienna has operated for two centuries. The fish stalls (the Wachauer Lachsforelle, the Saibling, the Donauwels), the Turkish cheese section, the Austrian fruit and vegetable stands, the Greek olive oil. None of this is unusual in Vienna. All of it is unusual in the context of a European capital city.
Vienna’s tourist circuit is good because the standard sights are genuinely extraordinary. The places above are good because they are Vienna before the postcards. Start with the 7-day itinerary for the foundations, then use any remaining days for the Zentralfriedhof and the Otto Wagner walk.