Things to do in Vienna

Food · 2nd district, across the canal

A working market square surrounded by the city's fastest-changing neighbourhood, between the Danube canal and the Prater.

Local tip: Saturday is the day the farmers' stalls come in and the square fills; the rest of the week it is a quiet local market with a handful of very good small restaurants around the edge. The whole district was Vienna's Jewish quarter and the layered history is on the walls if you look.

Nature · 2nd district

A four-kilometre chestnut avenue running dead straight through a former imperial hunting ground, and the city's default running and cycling route.

Local tip: The fairground at the entrance is what visitors photograph; the park behind it is enormous, half of it genuinely wild meadow and woodland. Locals measure runs in Hauptallee lengths. The Lusthaus at the far end is the turnaround point.

Culture · 7th district, behind the Hofburg

Imperial court stables converted into one of Europe's largest museum complexes, with the Leopold, mumok and the Kunsthalle around a big courtyard.

Local tip: The courtyard furniture is free to sit on and the yard functions as the city's living room from April onward — you do not need a ticket for any of it. Museums here are often free or cheap on specific evenings; check before paying full price.

Landmark · 19th district, Heiligenstadt

A kilometre-long 1930 council housing block, the emblem of Red Vienna, with a museum in one of its former communal laundries.

Local tip: Getting inside the story of Vienna's housing model is the single most useful cultural afternoon a newcomer can spend here, and almost nobody does it. The Waschsalon museum in Washhouse No. 2 explains exactly how the city built and financed this stock — and therefore why it is so hard for an arrival to get into it. Open limited days; check first.

Neighborhood · 7th district

The small-shop, small-bar, Biedermeier-lane quarter behind the museums — Vienna's most walkable central district and its most desirable.

Local tip: Spittelberg's cobbled lanes were slum-clearance candidates in the 1970s and were saved; they are now the prettiest streets in the inner city. Rents in the 7th are correspondingly brutal — look one district out, in the 8th or the 16th along the Gürtel, for the same character at a discount.

Nightlife · 19th district, at the edge of the vineyards

Wine taverns run by the growers themselves on the hillside where the city stops, serving their own new wine with cold food by the plate.

Local tip: Vienna is the only capital with commercial vineyards inside the city limits, and the Heuriger is a legal category, not a theme — a genuine one opens only when it has its own wine to sell, marked by a pine branch over the door. Take the 38A bus up and walk the Stadtwanderweg 1 back down.