City Tours

“The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt”, writer and literary critic Karl Kraus once said about Vienna, and he is right. Vienna is one of the grandest capital cities in Europe, and one of the most compact, too. We discover the making of Vienna from Roman “Vindobona” to the capital of one of the largest empires in Europe. See the most famous landmarks and sights, amongst them the one-time Imperial Palace of the Hapsburg family, the Viennese State Opera and all the nooks and crannies that make Vienna so Viennese.

In 1857, Emperor Franz Joseph decreed the demolition of Vienna’s medieval fortifications. The idea of a ‘Boulevard of Splendor’ was born. The ‘Ring’, as the Viennese call it, became the imperial city’s greatest pride and building project, a work of art initself, and unique in Europe. Today it is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is flanked by magnificent public buildings erected alongside the mansions of Vienna’s rising industrial and financial bourgeoisie, gardens and prancing monuments. We tell stories about the architects and their clients, anecdotes, and show historic photos.

Vienna 1900 saw political stagnation and decadence, at the same time also a cultural and intellectual renaissance unparalleled in the modern world. Gustav Klimt, Otto Wagner and Josef Hoffmann, the most inspirational talents of the time, broke new grounds in the fields of architecture, painting and design. They seceded from Vienna’s conservative, undistinguished art establishment and found their own art association. They called themselves “Secessionists” and named their newly-built exhibition hall with its laurel-leaf patterned dome Secession. “To each age its art, to art its freedom”, was their motto. A rebirth of the arts and new concepts of design were what they were aiming at. Their legacy still lives on.

We start our tour with an introduction to Gustav Klimt’s iconic Beethoven Frieze which was his contribution for an exhibition of the Secession honouring Beethoven. Originally located on the main floor, it was eventually moved to its present basement location where it is has been on permanent display since 1985. Its main theme is man’s search for happiness and fulfilment which he finds in art, and of course, in Beethoven’s music. We continue with three other iconic examples of Secessionist art, all by Otto Wagner, the father of Vienna’s Modernist architecture: the Majolica House with its flowery tiled facade, stations he designed for the Vienna Metropolitan Line, and the Postal Savings Bank, a remarkable example of the rectilinear secessionist style.

There have been Jewish communities in Vienna on and off since the 13th century, times of peace, religious freedom and prosperity but also times of growing anti-Semitism, persecution, expulsion and death. This illustrated tour offers an overview of the varying fates of the Viennese Jewry. Stops include the Simon Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, the Community Centre of the IKG (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, the Gestapo Memorial on Morzinplatz, and the Documentation Centre of the Austrian Resistance. The tour ends on Judenplatz where Rachel Whiteread’s Holocaust Memorial next to the Jewish Museum commemorates the Austrian victims of the Shoah.

For 655 years Austria was ruled over by the House of Habsburg. Their domain reached from Hungary to Spain. Planned to rival the French palace of Versailles they commissioned Schönbrunn Palace to be built as their summer residence in their former hunting grounds outside Vienna. Following the Spanish Court Ceremonial, more than 2.000 servants attended to their guests, maintained the huge baroque gardens, ran the kitchens and served as private valets of their majesties. In some of the most beautiful State Rooms we explore public but also everyday life at the palace followed by a short stroll through the formal gardens.