Vienna Family Holidays & Breaks

Vienna Outdoor Activities

• Head for the Prater, a former royal carriage-riding area most famous for its Riesenrad or giant ferris wheel, as seen in Orson Welles' The Third Man. Other attractions are a magic theatre, carousels, ghost and grotto trains, rollercoasters, arcades, Punch & Judy shows, a museum, restaurants cafés and snack stands.

• Beside it, discover the ‘Green Prater’, a former hunting ground, with walking, cycling and horse-riding popular throughout its meadows and forests, plus a miniature railway.  

• Soak in the city views from the Donauturm (Danube Tower) with its 150m-high outdoor observation desk. The tower also has a revolving restaurant and café.

• Chill out on the Donau Insel (Danube Island), where locals flock to Rollerblade, cycle, swim, canoe, hang out in restaurants and bars (some of them floating) and go clubbing. In July it hosts Donauinselfest – the world's largest free open-air music festival.

• Venture out to the Lainzer Tiergarten, a huge, free wildlife reserve on the south-west outskirts, full of wild boar, elks, fallow deer and mouflons. There’s also a visitor centre, a museum,, hiking trails, an observation tower and observation point, and restaurants and cafés.

• Sail along the Danube to Linz in Upper Austria or even Bratislava in Slovakia or Budapest in Hungary.

Vienna History and Culture

• Explore Vienna’s Museumsquartier or Museum District, not least the ZOOM Children’s Museum for ages 0–12. It’s also home for wienXtra-kinderinfo, an information service on activities for kids up to 13, including theatre, museum events and sports training. The Quartier is also a great place to just hang out, especially on summer evenings with open-air bars, outsized sofas and kids racing around the courtyard.

• Tour the Schloss Schönbrunn, the Habsburgs’ summer palace (i.e. Austria’s Versailles), a short underground ride from the centre. Its glorious grounds include mazes, statuary, a palm house, a fake Roman ruin, a museum of the fairytale golden imperial carriages, a puppet theatre and a playground.

• Explore the Hofburg and Neue Hofburg – the Habsburgs’ palace complex, now home to the Austrian president’s offices, the Kunsthistorisches Museum with masterpieces by Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velázquez and more, plus the world’s largest Brueghel collection, the neighbouring Schatzkammer or Imperial Treasury, with the Habsburgs’ jewels and other treasures, and the Hofjagd und Rüstkammer (Arms and Armour Collection). Best of all is the world-class Natural History Museum, where you can ogle meteorites, fossilsm and dinosaur skeletons.

• Head to the world-famous Spanish Riding School, a centre for classical dressage where you can watch public performances and occasional training sessions involving Lipizzaner stallions.  

• Learn about the evolution of Vienna into a modern city and the development of machinery, electronics and transportation at the Technisches Museum.

• In the Haus der Musik, conduct an orchestra, play giant instruments and carry out sound experiments.  

• Take in some children's opera at the Vienna State Opera, MuTh (the concert hall of the Vienna Boys' Choir_, the Volksoper, the Vienna Musikverein or the Wiener Konzerthaus.