Rebecca Engel
Vienna does winter better than almost anywhere in Europe, and it has the advantage of not needing snow to pull it off. The Christmas markets get the attention, and they earn it, but they are only open for about five weeks. The rest of the season is where the city really settles in, with concert halls and coffee houses and an ice rink that wraps around the town hall well into March.
Most people only get to Vienna in winter once, so this list gives you the markets and everything around them. These are twenty one festive things to do in Vienna in winter, starting with the four markets worth your evenings and moving through the concerts, the palaces and the food, plus a note at the end on when the markets close and what fills the gap.
1. Start At The Rathausplatz Christkindlmarkt
The Wiener Christkindlmarkt in front of the town hall is the biggest and the oldest of the city markets, and it is the one everybody pictures. Around one hundred and fifty stalls fill the square, the town hall behind them is lit up like a wedding cake, and the trees in the park are strung with enormous glowing hearts and stars.
Come after dark, because the whole thing is built around the lights. Weekday evenings are busy but manageable, and the first hour after opening is the calmest stretch you will get on a weekend.
The park behind the square is the part most visitors miss. The paths run under lit trees and away from the crowd, and there is a small carousel and a set of stalls out there that feel far quieter than the main square.
2. Wander The Lanes At The Spittelberg Market
Spittelberg is the market people come back for. Instead of one big square it fills a grid of narrow cobbled lanes between low Biedermeier houses, so you are walking through a neighbourhood rather than around a plaza.
The stalls here lean toward real craft work, ceramics, glass, wool and wood, rather than the mass produced ornaments you find at the larger markets. Prices are higher and the quality shows it.
It is a fifteen minute walk from the Rathausplatz, which makes the two easy to pair in one evening. Do the big one first while the light show is on, then walk over here for dinner and a quieter hour.
3. Take The Tram Out To Schönbrunn’s Palace Market
The market in the forecourt of Schönbrunn Palace has the best setting of any of them. The baroque facade is floodlit behind the stalls and there is a large tree in the middle of the courtyard, which makes it the most photographed of the four.
It is also the one that keeps going. Where most Vienna markets shut on the twenty sixth of December, this one switches over to a New Year market and runs into the first week of January.
The palace is a straight run out on the U4 line, about fifteen minutes from the centre. Go late in the afternoon so you get the courtyard in daylight and then again once the floodlights come on.
4. Browse The Art Advent Market On Karlsplatz
Art Advent sits in front of Karlskirche, which is worth the trip on its own for the green dome and the two carved columns out front. The market under it is the small, deliberate one.
Everything sold here is handmade and certified organic, which sounds like marketing until you see the stalls. There is far less tat and far more work you would actually keep.
It is the best of the four for children. There is a straw covered play area in the middle, usually with a few animals in it, and the whole market is small enough that nobody gets lost.
5. Warm Up With A Punsch Between Stalls
Punsch is the drink that keeps the markets running. It is hot, sweet and fruit based, usually with rum in it, and it is what most Viennese are holding rather than the mulled wine tourists reach for.
You pay a deposit on the mug and get it back when you return it, or you keep the mug. The designs change every year and every market has its own, which is how people end up with a cupboard full of them.
Every stall makes its own and they are not equal. Look for the ones with a queue of locals rather than the ones nearest the entrance, and try a Marillenpunsch made with apricot at least once.
6. Look Up At The Chandeliers On Graben And Kohlmarkt
The lights strung above Graben and Kohlmarkt are the most elegant thing Vienna does in December, and they cost nothing to see. Huge chandelier shapes hang the length of the street in tiers of warm white, so the whole avenue reads as one long ballroom ceiling.
Walk it from Stephansplatz down Graben, then left into Kohlmarkt toward the Hofburg. It takes ten minutes and it is the single best walk in the city on a cold night.
The shops along here are the expensive ones, and the window displays are part of the show. Demel at the far end of Kohlmarkt has been dressing its windows for well over a century.
7. Climb The South Tower At Stephansdom
St Stephen’s Cathedral is the centre of the city in a literal sense, and the tiled roof with its eagle pattern is one of the few things in Vienna that looks better under a grey sky than a blue one.
The south tower is a climb of three hundred and forty three steps up a tight spiral, with no lift and no way to pass anyone coming down. It is worth it for a view straight along the rooftops of the old town.
If the stairs are not appealing there is a lift up the north tower instead, which is lower but takes you to the Pummerin, the great bell that rings in the new year across Austrian radio.
8. Skate The Park Paths At Vienna Ice World
Once the Christmas market clears out of Rathausplatz, the square is turned into a skating rink, and it is not a small one. Wiener Eistraum covers the whole plaza with two large rinks and then adds something better on top.
The best part is the sky path, a network of narrow skating trails that winds through the park under the trees rather than going in circles. It runs above ground level in places and it is genuinely unlike skating anywhere else.
It opens in the second half of January and runs to early March, which makes it the answer for anyone visiting after the markets have gone. Skate hire is on site and evenings are when the lights are on.
9. Follow The Silvesterpfad On New Year’s Eve
Vienna does not put its New Year’s Eve in one place. The Silvesterpfad is a trail of stages and stalls threaded through the old town, from Stephansplatz down through Graben and out to the Rathausplatz, and you walk between them.
Each stage has its own music, so you get brass in one square, waltzes in another and a DJ somewhere down the road. It is free, it is outdoors and it goes on until two in the morning.
At midnight the Pummerin is broadcast across the city and everybody waltzes to the Blue Danube in the street, which sounds like a tourist board invention until you are standing in it.
10. Hear The Philharmonic At The Musikverein
The Musikverein is the gold room you have seen on television every New Year’s Day. It is the home of the Vienna Philharmonic and it is widely held to be the best sounding concert hall in the world.
Tickets for the New Year’s Concert itself go by a ballot drawn a year in advance, so treat that one as a lottery rather than a plan. The realistic routes in are the preview concert on the thirtieth of December or the repeat on the first of January, and both are far easier to get.
Failing that, the hall has a full programme all winter and standing places at the back are cheap. You are hearing the same room either way.
11. Buy A Standing Room Ticket At The State Opera
The Vienna State Opera puts on something almost every night of the winter, and it sells a block of standing places for a few euros each. It is the best value night out in the city by a distance.
The standing room queue forms at a separate entrance a couple of hours before the curtain. You tie a scarf to the rail to hold your spot once you are in, which is a genuine tradition and not a joke.
If a full opera is more than you want, take the guided tour of the building during the day instead. It runs year round and gets you into the tea room and the grand staircase.
12. Watch The Morning Exercise At The Spanish Riding School
The Lipizzaner stallions train in the Winter Riding School inside the Hofburg, a white baroque hall with chandeliers hanging over a sand floor. The room alone justifies the ticket.
The full performances are expensive and sell out well ahead. The morning exercise is the cheaper option, and it lets you sit in the same hall and watch the horses work through their training with music on.
It does not run every day and the schedule changes through the season, so check before you build a morning around it. When it is on it usually starts around ten.
13. Catch The Vienna Boys’ Choir At The Hofburgkapelle
The Vienna Boys’ Choir sings Sunday Mass in the chapel of the Hofburg, which they have been doing since the fifteenth century. It is a working church service rather than a concert, and it is free to stand at the back.
Seats are ticketed and go quickly, but standing room is released on the morning and the queue starts well before nine. The choir sings from a gallery above and behind you, so most of the congregation never sees them at all.
The season runs from September to June, which covers the whole winter. There are usually additional Christmas concerts in December at larger venues if the chapel is full.
14. Dress Up For A Night Of Ball Season
From the middle of January into February Vienna holds something like four hundred and fifty balls, and this is the thing no other city can offer you. The Opera Ball is the famous one, held in the State Opera with the stalls floored over into a dance floor.
That one is hard to get into and costs accordingly. The better move for a visitor is one of the trade balls, the coffee brewers’ ball or the confectioners’ ball, which are just as grand and sell tickets to anybody who wants one.
Black tie or a long gown is not a suggestion, it is the door policy, and there are shops in the city that rent both. Most balls run a short dance class early in the evening for people who have never waltzed.
15. Sit Down For Hours At Café Central
The Viennese coffee house is on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage, and the point of it is that nobody hurries you. You order one coffee, you are brought a glass of water with it, and the table is yours for as long as you want it.
Café Central is the grand one, a vaulted hall of arches and marble columns where Trotsky and Freud both spent their afternoons. There is usually a queue at the door and it moves faster than it looks.
Order a melange, which is the house coffee with steamed milk, and something from the cake counter. If the queue is long, Café Schwarzenberg on the Ring and Café Sperl in the sixth district are just as old and much easier to get into.
16. Walk Up To The Gloriette At Schönbrunn
Schönbrunn in winter is the version of the palace worth having. The gardens are free to walk, the tour groups have thinned out, and the long formal lawns look better bare and frosted than they do planted.
Walk up the hill behind the palace to the Gloriette, the colonnade on the ridge. It is a steady ten minute climb and it puts the whole palace and the city skyline below you in one view.
Snow is a bonus rather than a promise. Vienna gets some most winters but rarely for long, so plan for grey and treat a white morning as luck.
17. Stand In Front Of The Kiss At The Belvedere
The Belvedere holds the largest collection of Klimt in the world, and The Kiss hangs there. It is a small painting in person and it holds a room regardless, gold leaf catching the light from across the floor.
The upper palace is the one with the collection and the baroque state rooms. Winter is the season to go, because in summer the queue for that one painting runs out into the corridor.
The gardens between the upper and lower palaces are free and the view back over the city from the upper terrace is one of the best in Vienna.
18. Take The Riesenrad Around In The Cold
The giant ferris wheel in the Prater has been turning since 1897 and it is still the symbol of the city. The cabins are enclosed wooden rooms rather than open seats, which is exactly what you want in January.
One rotation takes about twenty minutes and it goes slowly enough to pick out the cathedral spire, the Danube and the hills where the wine villages sit. Go at dusk when the lights are coming on across the city.
Most of the surrounding amusement park closes for the winter, but the wheel runs year round and there is usually a small market at its foot through December.
19. Spend An Afternoon At Therme Wien
Vienna sits on hot springs and Therme Wien in the south of the city is the largest thermal bath in Europe. On a wet grey afternoon it is the best decision available to you.
There are indoor and outdoor pools, and the outdoor ones are the reason to come in winter. Sitting in warm water in the open air with the cold on your face is worth the tram ride on its own.
The sauna area is separate, larger, and traditionally textile free, which surprises visitors who wander in unprepared. The pool areas are not, so you can stay in swimwear all day if you would rather.
20. Eat A Schnitzel The Size Of The Plate At Figlmüller
Figlmüller is the schnitzel people mean when they talk about Vienna. It is pounded thin until it overhangs the plate on every side, fried pale gold, and served with nothing but a wedge of lemon and a potato salad on the side.
It is pork rather than veal at the original house, which is the cheaper and more common version in the city. If you want the veal that technically earns the name Wiener Schnitzel, ask for it.
There are two branches a few doors apart on the same lane and both take bookings, which is worth doing. Winter is the season for the heavier things anyway, so consider a goulash somewhere before you leave.
21. Ride The Tram Up To A Heuriger In Grinzing
Vienna is the only capital in Europe with commercial vineyards inside the city limits, and the wine taverns on the hills north of town are where the wine is drunk. Grinzing is the best known of the villages.
A heuriger serves its own wine and sells food from a counter by weight, roast pork, dumplings, spreads and pickles. In winter the courtyards close and everybody moves into low wood panelled rooms with tiled stoves, which is the better version.
Look for a bunch of pine branches hanging over the door. That is the sign the place is open and pouring its own wine, and it is how the system has worked here for two hundred years.
When To Go And What Closes
The Christmas markets open in the middle of November and almost all of them close on the twenty sixth of December. If the markets are the reason you are coming, that five week window is the trip, and the first half of December is the sweet spot before the crowds peak.
January and February are the other Vienna, and they are not a lesser one. The ice rink opens, ball season runs, the concert halls are at full programme and the hotels are at their cheapest of the year. Only the markets are gone, and Schönbrunn keeps a New Year market going into January to soften the handover.
Final Thoughts
Vienna is built for cold weather. Almost everything on this list is indoors or a short walk from something warm, the public transport is fast and cheap, and the whole centre is small enough to cross on foot in half an hour.
Come in December for the markets and the lights, or come in late January for the skating, the balls and a city with its normal population back. Book the opera and any ball tickets before you fly, and bring boots that handle wet pavement rather than deep snow.
