The Hofburg
The Hofburg grew by accretion from the thirteenth century to the twentieth, and covers more than 300,000 square metres. It was the Habsburgs' main residence until the end of the monarchy in 1918, and it is still in use: the office of the Federal President of Austria is in the Leopold Wing.
The oldest surviving part is the Swiss Wing, entered through the red and black Swiss Gate of 1552. The newest is the Neue Burg, the curved wing on Heldenplatz, finished in 1913 — five years before the dynasty that built it lost its throne. It was from the balcony of the Neue Burg that Adolf Hitler announced the annexation of Austria to a crowd on Heldenplatz on 15 March 1938.
There is no ticket to "the Hofburg". What can be visited is a set of separate institutions under different managements:
- The Imperial Apartments and the Sisi Museum — the rooms of Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth, and a museum devoted to her. Vienna's tourist board states that parts are altered or closed for renovation until a reopening on 19 November 2026.
- The Imperial Silver Collection — the court's tableware. It is listed as closed.
- The Imperial Treasury, in the Swiss Wing — the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian imperial crown made for Rudolf II in 1602, and the regalia of the Order of the Golden Fleece. It is run by the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and is to close from 8 to 18 February 2027.
- The Spanish Riding School — the Lipizzaner horses, which perform and train in the Winter Riding School built between 1729 and 1735.
- The State Hall of the Austrian National Library — the Baroque court library of the 1720s, designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, holding some 200,000 volumes.
- The Hofburg Chapel, where the Vienna Boys' Choir sings Sunday Mass, described under music in Vienna.
- The museums of the Neue Burg — the Weltmuseum, the Collection of Arms and Armour, the Ephesos Museum and the House of Austrian History.
The Habsburgs themselves are a short walk away, in the Imperial Crypt beneath the Capuchin Church on Neuer Markt, where some 150 members of the family have been buried since the seventeenth century.
Schönbrunn
The estate has belonged to the Habsburgs since 1569, and has been called Schönbrunn since 1642. The present palace was begun in 1696, after the Ottoman siege of 1683 had destroyed its predecessor, to designs by Fischer von Erlach. What visitors see is largely the work of Maria Theresa, who had it rebuilt as her summer residence from 1743.
It has 1,441 rooms, of which 45 can be visited. Mozart played in the Hall of Mirrors as a child of six, in 1762. Napoleon used the palace as his headquarters when he occupied Vienna. Franz Joseph was born here in 1830 and died here in 1916, and it was in the Blue Chinese Salon, on 11 November 1918, that his successor Emperor Charles signed the renunciation of his part in the government — the end of the monarchy.
The park is free and open all year. Within it, and charged separately, are the Gloriette, the colonnade of 1775 on the hill behind the palace; the zoo, founded in 1752 and the oldest still in existence; the Palm House of 1882; the maze; and the Imperial Carriage Museum.
The palace and gardens were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1996, and the tourist board describes Schönbrunn as the most visited attraction in Austria. Entry to the palace is by ticket for a fixed time, and the palace's own site advises booking in advance. Schönbrunn is about five kilometres from the centre, with its own station on underground line U4.
The Belvedere
The Belvedere was built for Prince Eugene of Savoy, the commander of the imperial armies against the Ottomans and the French, by the architect Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt. It is two palaces facing each other across a formal garden on a slope: the Lower Belvedere, built between 1712 and 1717, in which he lived, and the Upper Belvedere, built between 1717 and 1723, in which he entertained.
Maria Theresa bought the estate in 1752, after his death. In 1777 the imperial picture gallery opened in the Upper Belvedere — one of the first public museums in the world. From 1896 the Upper Belvedere was the residence of the heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination at Sarajevo in 1914 began the First World War.
Its other date is 15 May 1955, when the Austrian State Treaty was signed in the Marble Hall of the Upper Belvedere by the four occupying powers, restoring the country's independence.
The Upper Belvedere holds the national collection of Austrian art, and with it the largest collection of paintings by Gustav Klimt in the world — 24 oils, among them The Kiss. The Lower Belvedere and its Orangery are used for temporary exhibitions. A third building, Belvedere 21, a short walk to the south, is a pavilion designed for the Brussels World's Fair of 1958 and shows Austrian art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The collections are set out under museums and galleries in Vienna.
The gardens are free to enter. Tickets for the Upper Belvedere are sold for a fixed time.
Choosing between them
The three do different things. The Hofburg is the place for the apparatus of empire — crowns, apartments, library, horses — and is in the centre. Schönbrunn is the one that looks like a palace and takes at least half a day, most of it out of doors. The Belvedere is the smallest, and the reason to go is the paintings.