Explore Vienna

The Dom Museum Wien is the museum of the Archdiocese of Vienna, housed in the Zwettlhof on Stephansplatz beside St. Stephen's Cathedral. Founded in 1933 and reopened in 2017 after a redesign by Boris Podrecca, it shows the cathedral treasury and medieval sacred art alongside modern and contemporary works from the Otto Mauer Collection.

The Jewish Museum Vienna presents the history, religion and culture of Vienna's Jews at two sites a short walk apart. The main house in the Palais Eskeles on Dorotheergasse covers Jewish Vienna from the Middle Ages to today, while the Museum Judenplatz shows the excavated remains of the medieval synagogue destroyed in 1421.

The Haus der Musik is a museum of sound and music in the Palace of Archduke Charles on Seilerstätte, opened in 2000. Its interactive rooms explain how sound is made and heard, cover the Vienna Philharmonic, whose founder Otto Nicolai lived in the building, and composers who worked in Vienna, and include a virtual conductor that lets visitors lead an orchestra on screen.

The State Hall is the Baroque hall of the former court library in the Hofburg, built from 1723 to 1726 for Emperor Charles VI to plans by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and completed by his son. Under Daniel Gran's dome fresco stand about 200,000 books printed between 1501 and 1850, among them Prince Eugene of Savoy's library.

The Albertina is an art museum in the former Palais Tarouca on the Augustinian Bastion in central Vienna. It holds about 65,000 drawings and around a million prints, alongside photographs and architectural drawings, shows Impressionist and early 20th-century paintings on permanent loan, and opens the palace's Habsburg state rooms.

The Sisi Museum is devoted to Empress Elisabeth of Austria and has been housed since 2004 in the Stephan apartments of the Hofburg, entered from the Michaelerkuppel. Personal belongings of the empress illustrate her life, and the visit continues through the Imperial Apartments, the Habsburgs' winter residence.

The Imperial Treasury in the Hofburg is entered from the Schweizerhof, the oldest courtyard of the palace. In 21 rooms of secular and ecclesiastical collections it shows treasures gathered by the Habsburgs over centuries, including the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire and the crown, orb and sceptre of the Austrian Empire. It belongs to the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

The Weltmuseum Wien is Austria's largest anthropological museum, established in 1876 and housed in the Neue Hofburg wing on Heldenplatz. Known until 2013 as the Museum für Völkerkunde, it holds more than 400,000 ethnographic and archaeological objects from Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas, and reopened in 2017 after renovation.

Albertina Modern is the Albertina's museum of modern and contemporary art, opened in May 2020 in the Künstlerhaus on Karlsplatz, a Neo-Renaissance exhibition hall of 1868. It shows changing exhibitions drawn from a collection of art from the early 20th century to the present, including works from the former Essl Collection.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum on Maria-Theresien-Platz was built from 1871 to 1891 to plans by Gottfried Semper and Karl von Hasenauer to house the Habsburg art collections. Beneath its 60-metre dome it shows paintings by Bruegel, Dürer, Titian, Rubens and Vermeer, as well as the Kunstkammer, Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquities and a coin cabinet.

The Natural History Museum Vienna opened in 1889 in a Neo-Renaissance building by Gottfried Semper and Carl von Hasenauer, facing its twin, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, on Maria-Theresien-Platz. Its halls hold the imperial natural history collections: minerals and meteorites, dinosaur skeletons, mounted animals and the Venus of Willendorf, a figurine about 29,500 years old.

The Secession Building is an exhibition hall for contemporary art, completed in 1898 by Joseph Maria Olbrich for the Vienna Secession artists' association. A dome of gilded laurel leaves crowns the white cube, above the motto 'Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit'. The basement shows Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze of 1902.

Kunsthalle Wien is the City of Vienna's exhibition house for international contemporary art, opened in 1992 in a temporary container building by Adolf Krischanitz at Karlsplatz. It has no collection of its own and shows changing solo and thematic exhibitions at two sites, in the MuseumsQuartier on Museumsplatz and in a glass pavilion at Karlsplatz.

The Leopold Museum in Vienna's MuseumsQuartier opened in 2001 to show the collection of Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold, more than 5,000 works gathered over five decades. Its focus is Austrian art of the first half of the 20th century, with a large group of works by Egon Schiele and paintings by Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl.

Mumok, the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, is a museum of modern and contemporary art in the MuseumsQuartier. Since 2001 it has occupied a dark stone-clad block by Ortner & Ortner, and its collection of about 10,000 works includes Warhol, Picasso, Beuys, Lichtenstein and a large holding of Viennese Actionism.

The Sigmund Freud Museum occupies the building at Berggasse 19 in Vienna's Alsergrund district, where Freud lived and practised until he emigrated in 1938. Founded in 1971, it covers his life and work and the history of psychoanalysis, with original rooms, documents and personal objects.

The Lower Belvedere is the Baroque palace that Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt built for Prince Eugene of Savoy from about 1712 to 1716 at the foot of the Belvedere gardens on the Rennweg. Its state rooms, the adjoining Orangery and the Palace Stables now hold the Belvedere museum's temporary exhibitions and its medieval art.

KunstHausWien is a museum in Vienna's Landstraße district designed by the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who rebuilt an 1892 Thonet furniture factory between 1989 and 1991 with uneven floors, tiled columns and planted facades. The two lower floors hold a permanent exhibition of his work, and the upper floors show changing exhibitions.

The Upper Belvedere is the larger of the two Baroque palaces built for Prince Eugene of Savoy, designed by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt and completed in 1723 above a terraced garden. It houses the Belvedere's collection of Austrian art from the Middle Ages to the present, including Gustav Klimt's The Kiss and works by Schiele and Kokoschka.

Madame Tussauds Vienna is a wax museum on the Riesenradplatz in the Prater, opened on 1 April 2011 and run by Merlin Entertainments. More than 90 figures on three floors are grouped into themed rooms, from Maria Theresa, Mozart and Sigmund Freud to Austrian athletes, film actors and pop musicians, with a section on Empress Sisi.