Best For
Palaces, museums, zoo days, families who like calm
Recommended Nights
3
Getting There
VIE airport, 16 minutes to the centre on the CAT train
Known For
Schonbrunn, coffee houses, the opera, the oldest zoo on earth
The City That Does Not Shout At You
Vienna is the most comfortable big city in central Europe to take children through. It is clean, the transit is excellent, the pavements are wide, the parks are everywhere, and nobody is trying to sell you anything on the street. After a week in Prague or Budapest it feels like somebody turned the volume down.
Adam and I came through in late October 2010, years before the kids. We had already decided to cut that trip two weeks short because we were exhausted, and Vienna was meant to be a quick stop on the drive north. We loved it. He wrote at the time that not one building in the area we walked seemed ordinary, and that the city seemed happy to sit in the shadow of the places everybody else visits so it could breathe. That is still true fifteen years later.
Here is the honest part. Vienna is not a thrill. There is no one unmissable spectacle that everybody has already seen a photograph of. It is a city of interiors, gardens, cake, and a lot of very good buildings in a row. If your kids need constant stimulation you will have to build the days deliberately. If they can walk, look and eat, this is one of the easiest cities in Europe to be a family in.
Who it is for
Families with kids who like animals, palaces, trains and cake. It is also the right choice for a first city with a baby, because the U Bahn has lifts, the pavements are flat and wide, and nobody minds a stroller anywhere.
Who should skip it
If you have three days in central Europe and teenagers who want atmosphere and nightlife and cheap food, Prague or Budapest will land better. Vienna is more expensive than both, it is more formal than both, and it rewards a slower pace than either. Do not stack it against them and expect it to win on excitement.
Getting There
General ranges, not exact schedules. Traffic and season move all of these.
Coffee Houses With Children, And Whether That Actually Works
Yes, But Not At Eleven In The Morning
A Viennese coffee house is not a cafe. It is a room with marble tables, newspapers on wooden racks, waiters in waistcoats, and an unwritten rule that one coffee buys you the table for as long as you want it. That last part is the bit that makes it work with children. Nobody is going to rush you. Go mid afternoon when it is quieter, order cake, let everybody sit. Do not walk into Cafe Central at peak with three tired kids and a queue out the door.
The Water Comes With The Coffee
Every coffee in Vienna arrives on a small silver tray with a glass of tap water beside it, and the water is free and gets refilled. Vienna pipes its drinking water down from the Alps and is quietly smug about it, correctly. Order a melange, which is the local one, roughly a cappuccino. The kids can have hot chocolate and the water is the reason a coffee house works for an hour with a family.
Pick The Less Famous Room
Cafe Central, Cafe Sacher and Demel are the three everybody has heard of and all three have queues and tourist pricing. The city has hundreds of these rooms. Cafe Sperl, Cafe Landtmann, Cafe Pruckel, any of the neighbourhood ones in the seventh district. Same marble, same waistcoats, half the wait, and the cake is not worse.
What Is Genuinely Worth Your Hours
Schonbrunn, and the zoo attached to it
This is the family anchor and it is not close. The palace is the summer residence of the Habsburgs, the gardens behind it are free and enormous, and inside the same grounds is Tiergarten Schonbrunn, which opened in 1752 and is the oldest zoo in the world still operating. Palace in the morning on the shorter Imperial Tour, lunch, zoo in the afternoon, and you have filled a day properly without ever getting back on a train. There is a maze and a children’s playground in the gardens too, both of which cost almost nothing.
Stephansdom and the streets around it
The cathedral sits dead in the middle of the old city with a roof of a quarter of a million glazed tiles laid in a zigzag, which is the thing kids actually notice. Going inside the nave is free. The south tower is three hundred and forty three steps and no lift, the north tower has a lift and a big bell, and the catacombs tour underneath is the one older children will talk about afterwards. From here every lane in the Innere Stadt is walkable.
The Prater
Entry to the Prater is free. It is an old amusement park sitting inside a huge public park, and you pay per ride rather than at a gate, which means you can walk in, do three things and walk out without committing to a day or a wristband. The Riesenrad, the giant wheel from 1897, is the one to pay for. Behind the rides the Prater is mostly woodland and long avenues, which is where the actual Viennese go on a Sunday.
Sunday Closes Austria, And It Catches People Out
Austria still closes on a Sunday. Not the museums and not the restaurants, but the shops, the supermarkets and most of the ordinary commerce. If you land on a Saturday night planning to buy nappies and breakfast on Sunday morning, you will have a problem.
We learned this in Salzburg on that same 2010 trip, not in Vienna, and I want to be accurate about which city it was. I wrote at the time that arriving on a Sunday had become one of our favourite ways to see a city. The tourism is light, the locals are hiding somewhere, the shops are shut and the town is basically yours to walk around. That is genuinely lovely if you are looking at architecture. It is not lovely if you need groceries.
The workaround is simple. Buy what you need on Saturday. The shops at the main train station, Wien Hauptbahnhof, and at the airport are the exception and do open on Sundays, which is worth knowing at seven in the evening with a hungry family. Bakeries often open Sunday mornings. And the museums, the palaces, the zoo and the Prater are all open, so the day itself is not wasted.
Open On A Sunday
Always confirm before you build a day around one of these.
The Month You Pick Changes The City
Five Things To Eat In Vienna
Wiener schnitzel
Sachertorte
Apfelstrudel
Kaiserschmarrn
Wiener melangeNicole’s Perspective
The City We Expected Nothing From
Straight answer first. My own photographs from Vienna are all on the Austria guide already, so the picture above is not mine. I am not going to pretend otherwise on a page about honesty.
What is mine is the memory. Adam and I hit Vienna in late October 2010, before any of the kids, in a small camper, at the end of a trip we had already decided to cut two weeks short because we were done. We stopped there almost by accident on the drive north. We had been pleasantly surprised by Salzburg a few weeks earlier and expected roughly the same again.
We got more than that. Adam wrote that not one building we walked past seemed ordinary, that the scenery got better the closer we got to the opera house and the palace, and that it was a gorgeous, understated city with a very cultured feel. He called it a diamond in the rough, which is not a phrase either of us uses lightly. When we later listed the cities we would go back to just to walk around for free, Vienna was first on the list.
What I would tell you now, as the person who plans this for other families rather than the twenty something in the camper. Vienna is the low stress option in central Europe and that is worth real money when you are travelling with children. Send me your dates and I will tell you whether to give it two nights or four and what to run it with.
Lifts, Trams And Somewhere To Put Them Down
Vienna is the easiest city in this part of Europe to move a family around. Flat pavements, wide streets, lifts at most U Bahn stations, and trams that go where you want to go while the kids look out of the window.
Downtime Pick
The Donauinsel. A twenty one kilometre artificial island in the middle of the Danube with beaches, swimming, cycle paths and space. It is where Vienna goes in summer and it costs nothing. Stadtpark is the small central version if you cannot get out that far, and the Prater woods are the third option.
The Districts, And What Each One Costs You
The first, the seventh, the sixth and the second
Vienna numbers its districts and the numbering is genuinely useful. The first district is the Innere Stadt, everything inside the Ring. You are walking distance from Stephansdom and the Hofburg and you are paying for it. Beautiful, safe, quiet at night, and the most expensive beds in the city.
The seventh, Neubau, is my usual pick for families. Independent shops, good restaurants, real coffee houses, still a fifteen minute walk into the centre or two stops on the U3, and meaningfully cheaper. It is the district people mean when they say Vienna has a young side.
The sixth, Mariahilf, sits along the main shopping street and next to the Naschmarkt. Good value, very well connected, and useful if you want a supermarket within a block, which on a Saturday you will.
The second, Leopoldstadt, is across the canal by the Prater. Cheaper again, greener, a short U Bahn ride in, and it puts the giant wheel and the park on your doorstep. Around the main train station in the tenth is cheap and convenient and dull, which is a fair trade for a one night stop and not for a family holiday.
The Wachau, Where The Danube Actually Looks Like The Danube
Melk, Durnstein and a boat in between
The Wachau is the stretch of the Danube between Melk and Krems, about an hour and a quarter west of Vienna by train. Terraced vineyards, apricot orchards, small villages, and a ruined castle above Durnstein where Richard the Lionheart was held prisoner, which is a fact that lands well with a nine year old.
The version that works with children. Train to Melk, tour the abbey, which is an enormous yellow baroque monastery on a rock with a library that looks fake, then take the boat downriver to Durnstein and the train home from Krems. That is a full day and most of it is sitting on a boat watching castles go past, which is the opposite of a museum day.
If you want easier, take the train to Bratislava instead. It is about an hour, it is a different country, the old town is small and walkable and cheap, and you are back for dinner. I would do the Wachau with kids over eight and Bratislava with kids under it.
Where The Money Is Actually Worth Spending
Buy The Building, Not The Costume
Vienna sells a specific fantasy to visitors and most of it is not worth your money. The costumed Mozart concerts sold by men in wigs on Stephansplatz are not the Vienna Philharmonic. The horse drawn fiaker around the Ring is expensive and slow. And the Sacher Hotel cake queue is forty minutes for a slice you can buy at the counter in the shop next door.
Here is what I would actually spend on. Standing room at the Staatsoper costs a few euros, is sold on the day, and is a genuine world class opera house. Older children who can stand for an hour will remember it. The Spanish Riding School morning exercise is far cheaper than the performance and shows you the same horses in the same hall. And a family apartment in the seventh with a kitchen, because in a city this expensive breakfast at home pays for the rest.
One more. Do not buy the Vienna Pass on reflex. Add up the four things you will actually enter. Most families I run the numbers for are better off buying tickets individually and putting the difference into a transit pass.
The Honest Number Of Nights
Three nights. Two if Vienna is a stop on a longer central Europe run, and that works better here than it does in most capitals because the city is compact and the transit is fast. Four only if you are adding the Wachau or you have a museum family.
Day one, the Innere Stadt
Stephansdom, the lanes around it, the Hofburg from the outside, and a tram lap of the Ring on an ordinary ticket. Coffee house in the afternoon. Do not put a museum on the first day, everybody is still tired from getting here.
Day two, Schonbrunn all day
Palace at opening on the shorter tour, then the gardens, then the zoo after lunch. It is one U Bahn ride and one place and it fills the day. Come back into town for dinner in the seventh.
Day three, the Prater or a museum
Giant wheel and the park if the weather holds. If it does not, the Natural History Museum has the actual Venus of Willendorf and a lot of dinosaurs, and the Technisches Museum is the better one for hands on. Then cake.
Things I Tell Every Client Before Vienna
More From Us In Austria
The two real posts from the 2010 trip, the country guide, and the city four hours up the line that most people pair Vienna with.
Vienna With Kids, Answered
How many days do we need in Vienna?
Three nights for most families. Two works if it is one stop on a longer route, because the city is compact and the U Bahn is fast. Four if you want the Wachau or the Danube as well.
Is Schonbrunn worth it with young children?
Yes, and mostly because of what is attached to it. The gardens are free and huge, the zoo inside the grounds is the oldest in the world, and there is a maze and a playground. Do the shorter palace tour, not the long one, and give the afternoon to the animals.
Do coffee houses actually work with kids?
Yes, in the afternoon and away from the three famous ones. Nobody will hurry you out, the water is free and refilled, and the cake is the point. Cafe Central at peak with a queue outside is a different experience and not the one you want.
Is Vienna better than Prague or Budapest?
Different, not better. Vienna is calmer, cleaner, more formal and more expensive. Prague is prettier and far more crowded. Budapest is cheaper and rowdier. With small children Vienna is the easiest of the three. With teenagers who want atmosphere it is the least exciting.
What is actually shut on a Sunday?
Shops and supermarkets. Museums, palaces, the zoo, the Prater and restaurants are open. Buy your groceries on Saturday, or use the shops at the main station and the airport, which are the legal exception.
Does using a travel advisor cost me extra?
No. I am paid by the suppliers, not by you. You get the routing, the ticket sequencing and somebody to call when a railjet is cancelled on the day you were leaving.
Ready To Put Vienna On The Calendar
Send me your dates and how old your kids are and I will tell you how many nights Vienna needs, which district to sleep in, and whether to run it with Prague, Budapest or the Danube.
Plan Your Vienna Trip