Day-by-day programme of this 9-day itinerary across Vienna, the Wachau, Salzburg, Hallstatt and Innsbruck.
Day 1 — Arrival in Vienna
Land and step into the heart of the old city: St Stephen's spire, the elegant streets of the centre and the world's most famous schnitzel for dinner.
- ✈️ Vienna — Aeroporto di Vienna-Schwechat (VIE)
- 📍 St Stephen's Cathedral — The roof of 230,000 glazed zig-zag tiles and the 137-metre Gothic spire — the 'Steffl', as the Viennese call it — mark Austria's exact heart: Mozart married here and his funeral was held here. Inside, the stone pulpit with lizards chasing each other; above, 343 steps climb the south tower for a first sweep of the city. Out on Stephansplatz, the Graben with its palaces and plague column pulls you into the elegant promenade: dinner is two blocks away.
- 🍽️ Figlmüller Wollzeile — Since 1905 'the home of the schnitzel': Figlmüller's cutlet overflows the plate — 30 centimetres across, beaten paper-thin and fried in three different pans — served with warm potato salad and a Grüner Veltliner. Book ahead or queue in the lane, it is worth it. The perfect Viennese baptism. Then a short digestive stroll through the lit streets of the centre and early to bed: tomorrow you call on the Habsburgs at court.
- 🏨 Austria Trend Hotel Europa Wien — Innere Stadt, Vienna
Day 2 — Imperial Vienna
The Habsburg summer palace at opening with the Gloriette view, the winter palace with the Sisi Museum, and an afternoon in the world's most beautiful historic café.
- 📍 Schönbrunn Palace — The Habsburg Versailles: 1,441 imperial-yellow rooms where Maria Theresa ruled an empire and a six-year-old Mozart jumped into the empress's lap after his concert. The Grand Tour audio guide crosses 40 rooms of mirrors, Chinese lacquer and the chamber where Franz Joseph died. Outside, the park is free and immense: climb to the Gloriette for the perfect view of palace with Vienna behind, and if you travel with kids the zoo here is the world's oldest. Timed online tickets, always. The U4 returns you to the centre: the afternoon belongs to the Hofburg.
- 📍 Hofburg — The winter palace is a city within the city: 600 years of wings and courtyards from which the Habsburgs ruled half of Europe. The combined ticket covers the Imperial Apartments, the court silver and above all the Sisi Museum, which dismantles the myth of the unhappy empress piece by piece — the wasp-waist dresses, the gymnastic equipment, the melancholy poems. Next door, the Spanish Riding School with its Lipizzaners (morning exercises open to visitors). Out through St Michael's dome, a five-minute walk brings you to a marble table beneath cathedral vaults.
- 🍽️ Café Central — Beneath the neo-Renaissance vaults of Café Central, Freud, Trotsky and Stefan Zweig wrote and argued: Viennese coffee-house culture is UNESCO-listed and here you understand why — the tuxedoed waiter, the glass of water with its spoon, the newspaper on a wooden stick, no rush whatsoever to leave. Order a Melange with Apfelstrudel or Sachertorte (the war with Hotel Sacher over the original has raged since 1832). The queue moves. Then an evening stroll along the floodlit Graben: tomorrow belongs to Klimt and the blue Danube.
Day 3 — The Kiss and the Prater
Klimt's Kiss at the Belvedere, lunch among the Naschmarkt stalls and sunset from cinema's most famous Ferris wheel.
- 📍 Upper Belvedere — In Prince Eugene's Baroque palace lives Austria's most beloved painting: Klimt's Kiss, gold on gold, before which people fall silent even when the room is full. Around it, the world's largest Klimt collection (with Judith), the tormented Schieles and the Kokoschkas. The French garden descending towards the Lower Belvedere gives the classic view over Vienna. Timed tickets. Then a tram to the market where Vienna has eaten for two hundred years: it is just the right hour.
- 🍽️ Naschmarkt — A kilometre and a half of stalls between two avenues: Vienna's historic market mixes alpine cheeses, Ottoman spices, falafel, oysters and little eateries where you lunch cheaply amid the bustle. On Saturdays a flea market joins in. Try a Käsekrainer (cheese-filled sausage) from a stand or a taste of sarma, legacy of the multi-ethnic empire. At the market's end, Otto Wagner's Art Nouveau houses on the Linke Wienzeile deserve a craned neck. Then the U-Bahn towards the world's most melancholy, beautiful amusement park.
- 🎯 Wiener Riesenrad — The 1897 Ferris wheel, with red wooden cabins the size of trams, is a ride through cinema history: here Orson Welles delivered the Third Man monologue and anyone filming in Vienna passes through. Fifteen minutes of slow rotation with the city spreading below, perfect at sunset. Around it, the Prater: the people's park with vintage rides, rollercoaster skylines and the chestnut trees of the Hauptallee. Dinner in a neighbourhood Gastwirtschaft or at the Schweizerhaus (pork knuckle and beer, April to October). Early alarm tomorrow: you sail the Danube.
Day 4 — The Wachau and Melk
Day trip into the UNESCO valley: Melk's Baroque library, a cruise among terraced vineyards and the village of Dürnstein where Richard the Lionheart was held prisoner. Back to Vienna in the evening.
- ✈️ Wien Hauptbahnhof → Melk — Stazione di Melk
- 📍 Melk Abbey — The golden-yellow Benedictine monastery ruling the Danube from its rocky spur is Austrian Baroque at its peak: the library with 100,000 ancient volumes and seventeenth-century globes (Umberto Eco set the opening of The Name of the Rose here: 'Adso of Melk'), the church dripping with gold and the terrace overlooking the river you are about to sail. Monks still live here, running one of Austria's oldest schools. A couple of hours' visit, then down to the pier: the boat casts off into the valley of vineyards.
- 🎯 Wachau Danube Cruise — An hour and forty minutes through the most beautiful stretch of the entire Danube, UNESCO-listed: terraced vineyards plunging into the river, fishing villages with onion-domed churches, ruined castles on every height and the Wachau's apricots (Marillenknödel dumplings are the local dessert) sold along the banks. You sail on deck, glass of local Riesling in hand. You land at the foot of the valley's most romantic village, beneath a powder-blue tower.
- 📍 Dürnstein — The blue-and-white bell tower of the Augustinian abbey is the Wachau's lighthouse; above the village, the ruins of the castle where Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned in 1192 on his way back from the crusade — found, legend says, by the minstrel Blondel singing beneath walls until the king sang back. A 25-minute climb repaid by the view over the river's bend. Down in the village, a single street of shops, wine taverns and apricots in every form. The train from Krems (connecting bus or a 40-minute walk through the vineyards) returns to Vienna for the last night: tomorrow, suitcases and Salzburg.
Day 5 — Train to Salzburg
The Railjet crosses Austria in two and a half hours. Afternoon among the Sound of Music gardens, the street of golden signs and Mozart's birthplace. Dinner where people have eaten since 803.
- ✈️ Wien Hauptbahnhof → Salzburg Hauptbahnhof — Südtiroler Platz 1, Salisburgo
- 📍 Mirabell Gardens — The Baroque gardens of Mirabell Palace are The Sound of Music's most recognisable set: the staircase and Pegasus fountain where Maria and the children sing Do-Re-Mi, the geometric parterres and — behind — the stone dwarfs of the Zwergerlgarten. But the real magic is the perspective: from the steps, the Hohensalzburg fortress frames the backdrop exactly where it should. Free and always open. Then cross the river Salzach on the padlocked footbridge, straight into the old town's maze.
- 📍 Getreidegasse — Austria's most famous street is a gallery of gilded wrought-iron signs — even McDonald's had to comply with a heraldic eagle. At number 9, the yellow house where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756: the museum keeps his childhood violin and letters, an hour's visit. Between shop windows, slip into the Durchhäuser, the secret courtyard passages linking the parallel streets. The best Mozartkugeln? The blue-and-silver handmade ones at Konditorei Fürst, where they were invented. At sunset, dinner has an address that is a piece of history.
- 🍽️ St. Peter Stiftskulinarium — Documented since the year 803 — Alcuin, Charlemagne's adviser, wrote of it — it is held to be Europe's oldest restaurant: you dine in halls carved into the Mönchsberg rock, inside St Peter's monastery, where Columbus and Faust are said to have eaten. Elegant Austrian cooking (Tafelspitz is the flagship dish) and Mozart concert dinners in period costume. Booking advised. Outside, the adjacent St Peter's cemetery, with wrought-iron graves beneath the cliff, is the city's most evocative spot by night. Tomorrow you climb to the fortress.
- 🏨 Altstadthotel Weisse Taube — Altstadt, Salisburgo
Day 6 — Salzburg from above
The funicular climbs to the never-conquered fortress, then the cathedral where Mozart was baptised and an afternoon among Hellbrunn's prankster trick fountains. Evening in a monastic brewery.
- 📍 Hohensalzburg Fortress — Central Europe's largest fortress has watched over Salzburg for 900 years and was never taken: the prince-archbishops who lived here funded their splendour with the salt monopoly — hence the city's name. The funicular climbs in one minute; above, the princes' chambers with gilded ceilings, the 'Salzburg Bull' (the organ that has bellowed over the city since 1502) and the total view: spires below, Alps behind. Back down, the cathedral square lies exactly at the foot of the crag.
- 📍 Salzburg Cathedral — The first great Baroque cathedral north of the Alps, pale marble and a dome flooding the nave with light: at the Gothic font, a survivor of the rebuild, little Wolfgang was baptised in 1756 (and before him, the future Joseph Mohr who would write Silent Night). The main organ is one of five Mozart played as Konzertmeister. A quick lunch on Kapitelplatz beside the golden sphere with the man on top — the city's most photographed sculpture. Then bus 25 reaches the palace of water pranks in twenty minutes.
- 📍 Hellbrunn Palace — Prince-Archbishop Markus Sittikus was a prankster and in 1615 built himself the villa of tricks: the Wasserspiele are hidden water games that soak guests by surprise — the stone table where jets shoot from every seat (except the host's), the mechanical theatre of 200 water-driven figurines, the singing grottoes. The guide triggers the pranks and nobody leaves dry: in summer it is a blessing. In the park, the glass pavilion from Sixteen Going on Seventeen. Back to town for the last Salzburg evening: monks' beer beneath the chestnut trees.
- 🍽️ Augustiner Bräu Mülln — The Augustinian monastery brewery has poured since 1621 and is Austria's largest: take a ceramic stein from the shelf, rinse it at the fountain and hand it to the master who fills it from the wooden barrel. Around you, smoky halls and the chestnut-tree garden; food comes from the corridor stalls — pork knuckle, pretzels, horseradish grated on the spot. Zero touristification: this is where Salzburg drinks. Walk home along the floodlit Salzach: tomorrow, the world's most photographed lake.
Day 7 — Hallstatt
Day trip into the Salzkammergut: the village between lake and mountain that named an age, the world's oldest salt mine and the suspended Skywalk. Back to Salzburg in the evening.
- ✈️ Salzburg Hauptbahnhof → Hallstatt Lahn — Lahnstraße, Hallstatt
- 📍 Hallstatt Marktplatz — Pastel wooden houses squeezed between the still lake and the vertical mountain: Hallstatt is so photogenic that China built a full-scale replica of it. The little market square, the Protestant church with its pencil spire (the one in the photo), the ossuary with 600 painted skulls in St Michael's chapel and the views from the 'postcard point' north of the village. A UNESCO site with 800 residents and millions of visitors: arriving early changes everything. As the crowds build, ride the funicular up to where salt made history.
- 🎯 Salzwelten Hallstatt — The world's oldest salt mine: digging here began 7,000 years ago, and the Iron Age finds inside the mountain named an entire era, the 'Hallstatt culture'. The funicular climbs to the Skywalk viewpoint — a platform cantilevered 350 metres above the village rooftops, the definitive lake photo — then the mine tour in miners' overalls, down the wooden miners' slides (65 metres, you hit 30 km/h) and past the illuminated underground salt lake. Two and a half hours of thrill and archaeology. Back down, a last gelato on the lakefront and the buses return to Salzburg: tomorrow, the real Alps.
Day 8 — Innsbruck
Train into the heart of Tyrol: the old town with the Golden Roof, and in the afternoon the Nordkette — from the centre to 2,000 metres in half an hour by cable car. Tyrolean dinner under the arcades.
- ✈️ Salzburg Hauptbahnhof → Innsbruck Hauptbahnhof — Südtiroler Platz 1, Innsbruck
- 📍 Golden Roof — The balcony roofed with 2,657 gilded copper shingles was Emperor Maximilian I's royal box: from here he watched tournaments in the square, and the glittering roof was his way of telling Europe money was no object (he owed it to the Fuggers of Augsburg, but that's a detail). Around it, the pastel Altstadt with the frescoed Helblinghaus façade and medieval arcades. Climb the City Tower's 148 steps for the overview: the city below, the Nordkette looming above — and that is exactly where you go this afternoon.
- 🎯 Seegrube — No other European city has a cable car like this: you depart from Zaha Hadid's futuristic station in the very centre and in half an hour — Hungerburg funicular plus two cable car legs — you stand at the Seegrube's 1,905 metres, terrace tables suspended above the Inn valley and eagles circling in the thermals. Push on to the Hafelekar (2,269 m), overlooking the Karwendel nature park: a few steps along the ridge and the silence is total. Ride down as sunset gilds the valley, straight towards a Tyrolean dinner under the arcades.
- 🍽️ Stiftskeller Innsbruck — In the vaulted halls of the old monastery (and the big beer garden in summer) the trip closes with true Tyrolean cooking: Tiroler Gröstl — the skillet of potatoes, speck and egg born as a day-after dish — dumplings in broth, and shredded Kaiserschmarrn with plum compote to finish. Augustiner beer on tap and a no-frills Gasthaus atmosphere. A final stroll along the Inn with the coloured Mariahilf houses lit on the far bank: tomorrow you cross the Alps for home.
- 🏨 Altstadthotel Weisses Kreuz — Altstadt, Innsbruck
Day 9 — Maria-Theresien-Straße and the journey home
A Tyrolean breakfast, the elegant street with the Nordkette as backdrop and the train over the Brenner towards Italy. Nine days of Austria, ending on a high.
- 📍 Maria-Theresien-Straße — The last stroll is along Tyrol's most scenic street: pastel Baroque palaces, St Anne's Column at the centre and — raising your eyes above the rooftops — the Nordkette wall closing the perspective like a painted backdrop. A coffee at the tables, Maria Theresa's Triumphal Arch at the end of the street, last purchases of speck and lingonberry jam. Then collect the suitcase: the platform for Italy waits ten minutes away on foot.
- ✈️ Innsbruck Hauptbahnhof → Verona Porta Nuova — Piazzale XXV Aprile, Verona
