Vienna’s centre is small — the Innere Stadt is about a kilometre across, ringed by the Ringstrasse, and you can walk the whole of it in an afternoon. The palaces and the big collections are outside that ring, and the U-Bahn reaches all of them in under fifteen minutes. Two days works if you keep those two things separate.
Day one: inside the Ring
Early. St Stephen’s Cathedral before nine, when the nave is quiet and the square outside is not yet full of people in wigs selling concert tickets. Climb the south tower — 343 steps, one way, and the best view over the roof tiles.
Mid-morning. Walk west along the Graben and Kohlmarkt to the Hofburg. Decide in advance which collection you want: the Imperial Treasury is the best of them, with the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. The Sisi Museum is the popular one and is better than it sounds. Do not try to do all of it.
Late morning. Ten minutes north is Judenplatz, Rachel Whiteread’s memorial standing on the excavated foundations of a synagogue destroyed in 1421. It takes twenty minutes and it will reframe the rest of your day.
Lunch. Café Central is round the corner and has a queue. If you want the coffee house rather than the photograph, go to Café Sperl or Café Hawelka instead.
Afternoon. The Kunsthistorisches Museum. Give it three hours and do not pretend otherwise — twelve Bruegels in one room and the Kunstkammer are worth the whole afternoon. If painting is not your thing, the Natural History Museum in the identical building opposite has the Venus of Willendorf and a quarter of the crowd.
Evening. Standing tickets at the State Opera go on sale eighty minutes before curtain for a couple of euros. Queue at the Operngasse door ninety minutes ahead. If nothing appeals, the Musikverein does the same thing.
Day two: outside the Ring
Early. Schönbrunn on the first timed slot, booked days ahead. Take the Grand Tour rather than the Imperial — the extra eighteen rooms are the interesting ones. Then walk up to the Gloriette for the view back down.
Late morning. The gardens are free and enormous. If you have children, the Tiergarten is the oldest zoo in the world and a good one.
Lunch. Back into town, or at the Naschmarkt — but walk to the far end, where the prices are what locals pay.
Afternoon. The Belvedere for Klimt’s The Kiss, entering at the Lower palace and walking up through the garden. Or, if you would rather have Schiele, the Leopold Museum has the largest collection of him anywhere.
Evening. The Heurigen at the edge of the city — tram D to Nussdorf, wine from the grower, food from a buffet counter, and Vienna stops being imperial for a few hours.
What to book ahead
Schönbrunn’s timed slot, and an opera seat if you want to sit rather than stand. Everything else can wait.
If you have a third day
The Wachau — train to Melk, abbey, boat downstream to Krems — is the best day out of Vienna. Or Bratislava, another capital, an hour away.
In the city, the Zentralfriedhof and the Freud Museum make a coherent day about the century Vienna would rather not discuss.
Pace
Do not attempt Schönbrunn and the Hofburg on the same day. They are the same thing twice, and by the second set of gilded state rooms you will have stopped seeing them. Split the palaces across the two days, as above, and put a museum or a market between them.
Museum closing days
Vienna’s museums do not agree on a closing day, which is a planning trap. The Kunsthistorisches closes Mondays outside the summer months; the Natural History Museum closes Tuesdays; the Leopold closes Tuesdays in winter; the Albertina and the Belvedere open daily. Check the two or three you actually care about before fixing which day is which, because a Monday built around the Kunsthistorisches is a wasted morning.
If it rains
This is a good city to be rained on. The Hofburg complex, the MuseumsQuartier and the Kunsthistorisches can each absorb half a day, the coffee houses exist precisely for sitting out weather, and almost everything inside the Ring is within a five-minute dash of a U-Bahn entrance.
Getting the ticket you want
Vienna’s cultural bargains all involve queueing rather than paying. Standing places at the Opera and the Musikverein, the Morning Exercise at the Spanish Riding School instead of the performance, tram 1 instead of the sightseeing tram. Build one of those into each evening and the two days cost a fraction of what the guidebooks assume.