The Sisi Museum
Shows the empress as she was rather than as the films imagined her: a woman boxed in by protocol, with her exercise equipment and corset as material proof.
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The Hofburg is the central winter residence and a complex of several museums; Schönbrunn is the suburban summer palace with vast gardens. The Hofburg is easier to reach, Schönbrunn better for a day out.
The main entrance for the Imperial Apartments is on Michaelerplatz under the green dome. Booking ahead helps in summer and on Sundays; off-season it is unnecessary.
Yes if you love history: it holds the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and the palace's strangest relics. But it is a third ticket and another hour — decide by how long your day is.
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The Habsburgs' winter residence in the heart of Vienna — not one building but a small city grown layer upon layer since the thirteenth century: wings from different eras, courtyards leading into courtyards, passages ducking under arches from one square to the next. Part of it now houses Austria's president, part is museums, part a library, part a stable of horses. The visitor ticket covers three linked sections: the Imperial Apartments where Franz Joseph and Sisi lived, the Sisi Museum — which takes the empress's legend apart rather than repeating it — and the Silver Collection, thousands of pieces once laid out for a single banquet. The best approach is to treat the Hofburg as a quarter rather than a monument: cross Heldenplatz, step into the Imperial Treasury for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, glance into the Spanish Riding School, then walk out through the gate onto Michaelerplatz. You can do all of that without a single ticket if you like.
Shows the empress as she was rather than as the films imagined her: a woman boxed in by protocol, with her exercise equipment and corset as material proof.
A vast open square before the Neue Burg with two equestrian statues — and the best view of the palace's curving façade.
Franz Joseph's rooms, where he slept on a military iron bed for sixty years while ruling an empire — a detail that explains the whole man.
Services for thousands and a napkin fold whose method is still an official secret — pomp as an administrative system.
Michaelerkuppel, Vienna