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The fine Baroque Schönborn Palace, built between 1708 and 1713 by Lukas von Hildebrandt, has been the home of the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art since 1917. Besides changing exhibitions, it features a permanent collection of traditional Austrian clothing, furniture, pottery, religious objects and tools dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The museum, founded in 1895, also includes collections from the former territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The palace has wonderful landscaped gardens that can also be accessed without visiting the museum.

The former imperial stables have been imaginatively transformed into a vast complex of museums and entertainment venues that shouldn’t be missed (see pp28–9).

This magnificent concert hall in Greek Renaissance style was built by Theophil von Hansen in 1869 for the Society of Friends of Music. The concert hall became world famous after the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra began giving their annual New Year’s Concert here in 1941. There are three performance areas but the main auditorium, the “Golden Hall”, is the finest, with lavish decorations in blue and gold and excellent acoustics (see p60).

Designed by Gottfried Semper and Karl von Hasenauer, who also worked on the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Natural History Museum opened in 1889 and was built as a mirror image of its more famous neighbour, the Art History Museum. The fascinating collections of natural history, geology and archaeology have grown out of Emperor Franz Stephan’s 1748 collection of natural curiosities. The museum’s splendid interior was designed to enhance the objects which today mount up to more than 20 million exhibits. The most precious rarities in the museum’s 39 showrooms are the 25,000-year-old sculpture Venus of Willendorf and a “bouquet of jewels” given to Franz Stephan by his wife Maria Theresa. The Vienna Natural History Museum was voted among the world’s top 10 museums in 2001.

The Neo-Gothic town hall with its spires, stone rosettes in the pointed windows and loggias was built by Friedrich von Schmidt in 1883 to express the inhabitants’ pride in their city at that time. The impressive building has seven arcaded courtyards and 1,575 rooms where the Vienna City Council and the mayor have their offices. All year round various festivals take place on the square in front of the Rathaus, ranging from a Christmas market to a music film festival in summer (see p80). Don’t miss the opportunity to see the building at night, when floodlights spectacularly highlight the façade.

The two pavilions on Karlsplatz were built by the architect Otto Wagner in 1897 as twin stations for the Vienna City Train, the horse-drawn and then steam-powered predecessors of today’s underground. In total Wagner designed 34 stations and various bridges and viaducts for the train line that was finished in 1901. The pavilions on Karlsplatz are made of steel and marble slabs, and the roof over the arched entrance gate is decorated with golden ornaments. Both stations lost their function when the modern underground lines were built and are today used as exhibition spaces by the Historic Museum and as a popular café.

Otto Wagner built this Neo-Renaissance palace as his home in 1891, before he joined the Secessionist movement. The windows of the upper floor are framed with floral details, but the ground and first floors are built in sombre stone.

Constructed as the summer residence for the Liechtenstein family at the end of the 17th century, the palace is Vienna’s premier home of Baroque art. It has undergone extensive renovation and has been reopened as a museum. This magnificent private collection of Baroque art includes masterpieces by many important artists, such as Raphael, the Brueghels, Rubens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt. The gardens are also open to the public (see p50).

This magnificent building (1873–83) was designed by the architect Theophil von Hansen who chose its Greek style to celebrate the cradle of democracy. Two broad ramps are lined by statues of Greek philosophers and thinkers that lead to the main entrance. Here the first Austrian Republic was proclaimed in October 1918.