Vienna Palace Tickets and Guided Tours
Two palaces, 37 listings and nine minutes of underground between them and the centre: 30 EUR at one door, 23 at the other, and two opposite rules about being late.
Vienna is the only base in this catalogue where no palace asks you to leave the city. Karlsplatz to Schönbrunn is nine minutes on the U4, running every two to seven minutes on a normal weekday, and the Belvedere is a tram ride from the Ring. Travel time, the thing that decides a castle day almost everywhere else, decides nothing here. What decides a Vienna day is that the two palaces put opposite clocks on their tickets. Schönbrunn sells a fifteen minute slot and says in writing that a late ticket is no longer valid. The Belvedere sets the hour you walk in and then stops counting: the stay is unlimited. Plan the day around that difference and it works. Ignore it and one of the two visits gets cut in half.
The catalogue splits almost in half and the two halves do not cost the same. Twenty listings belong to Schönbrunn, 17 to the Belvedere, and the median price is 73.50 EUR on one side and 150 on the other. That is not a quality gap between the buildings. It is what happens when people buy a palace to see a house and a museum to see a painting: the expensive Belvedere listings are private tours with an art historian attached, priced at 150, 165 and 195 EUR, while the Schönbrunn listings that sell in volume are guided visits at 55 to 63 EUR.
One more thing shapes the choice, and it catches people who did their homework. The Vienna PASS behaves in opposite ways at the two palaces. At the Belvedere it is a real fast track: no time slot at all, straight past the ticket counter to the exhibition entrance. At Schönbrunn the same card gives nothing of the kind. The operator says in as many words that priority admission does not exist there, a fifteen minute reservation is required of pass holders too, and what gets scanned at the gate is that reservation. The card also covers only the 30 EUR route through the palace, with about 10 EUR more to upgrade at the moment you pick the slot.
One number is worth carrying into the booking. Eleven of the 37 Vienna listings confirm immediately; the other 26 wait for the operator to come back to you. When the thing being reserved is a fifteen minute window at a fixed hour, a confirmation that arrives tomorrow is a different product from one that arrives now. Thirty four of the 37 can be cancelled free of charge, which is the safety net underneath that wait.
Choose a destination in Vienna
-
Schönbrunn Palace
Imperial Tour and Grand Tour were withdrawn. The palace sells the State Apartments at 30 EUR for about 40 minutes and the Palace Ticket at 42 for about 75…
20 experiences -
Belvedere Palace
Two baroque palaces and a garden between them. The Upper is 23 EUR, the Lower 17, both together 32, and the time on the ticket fixes only the hour you walk in.
17 experiences
Castles Experiences in Vienna
Eight Hundred Years of Art in Two Hours, Under the Belvedere Sign
Two hours with a licensed private guide and a timed entry, across 800 years of collection: Klimt, Schiele, Monet, van Gogh and Rodin. Gardens included.
Judith, The Embrace and The Girl and Death, Read as Austrian Identity
A themed private tour reading the collection as national identity, from medieval gilding to Waldmüller. The meeting point is 100 metres in from the street.
Laid Out by a Pupil of Le Nôtre; Meet at the Model of the Palace
Two private hours inside on the partner-only Highlights ticket, then the Great Parterre walked on your own, in gardens by a pupil of Le Nôtre.
Moholy-Nagy, Motesiczky and Kupka Beside the Klimt Everyone Knows
Four lengths from two to four and a half hours, and the longer ones add the Lower Belvedere: the Grotesque Hall, the Orangery and the medieval armour.
The Beethoven Frieze Is the One Work of His That Surrounds You
Three buildings in one tour: The Kiss and Judith, then the Beethoven Frieze, then Death and Life and the university ceilings at the Leopold.
Three Private Hours That End at the Christmas Market, Not the Exit
Tickets included, the park and the Klimt rooms first, then a guided turn through the Belvedere Christmas market, where the tour leaves you free.
No Guide, No App, No Palace Ticket: Ten Stops on Your Own Phone
Thirty minutes of audio across two hours of walking, ten stops outdoors, nine languages. The link is inside the voucher and no app needs installing.
Private, Morning or Afternoon, and the Gardens Come Before the Palace
A private half day at Schönbrunn, booked morning or afternoon, that starts with the Gloriette and the park of 1779 and finishes inside the state rooms.
Six People at Most, and the Millions Room Named for What It Cost
A historian guide and no more than six in the group, through the Porcelain Room and the Millions Room. The palace can refuse entry if you are late.
Four Hundred and Thirty Works, and the Marble Hall Around Them
A group tour through 430 works, van Gogh, Monet and Schiele among them, in rooms the Austrian state has been filling since 1948. Cancel by the time slot.
One Hour Outside, Ninety Minutes Inside, and the Ticket Is Yours to Buy
Admission is not included and the guide helps you buy it. Meet at the ticket office 15 minutes early, then the gardens, and Klimt's golden period.
Sixty State Coaches, the Sledges, and Two Centuries of Livery
The vehicles the court actually travelled in: over 60 coaches, sledges and sedan chairs, with the harness and livery. The ticket cannot be cancelled.
Start at the Lower Gate on Rennweg and Walk Up Through the Park
Two and a half hours beginning at the Lower Belvedere on Rennweg, up through the French garden and the lake, and into the Klimt rooms at the top.
The Bride Was Left Unfinished in the Studio When the Ambulance Came
A private tour on Klimt alone, from the early Portrait of an Unknown Lady to the unfinished Bride, with his rivals and collaborators hung around him.
The Café Staff Know Nothing About the Tour, So Wait Out Front
A reserved time slot, the Grand Staircase, and Klimt, Schiele and van Gogh with an art historian. The tour ends at the Orangery in the gardens.
The Only Synagogue in Vienna That Survived the War, and Schnitzel at Noon
A private day that opens at the Morzinplatz war memorial, not a palace: twenty stops, lunch at the Naschmarkt, and an hour inside Schönbrunn at the end.
A Scholar Guide to Yourselves, from the Terraces to the Attersee
Two and a half hours in a private group: an hour on the grounds and the two palaces, ninety minutes in the galleries. Admission is bought on site.
Headsets for the Crowded Rooms, and It Can Still Be Cancelled
Headsets carry the guide through 22 rooms including the Great Gallery, and the ticket line is skipped. Free cancellation up to the date of the visit.
Twenty-Four Rooms or Forty, With or Without the Hour of Transfer
A private licensed guide and four lengths to pick from: 24 rooms in two hours or 40 in two and a half, each with an hour of transfer added if wanted.
Twenty-Two Rooms, Lantern to Hunting, Not the Standard Imperial Tour
Two and a half hours on the 22-room Highlights route, open only through official partners, meeting at Café Gerstner and not the Schlosscafé by the gate.
Do Not Go Into the Palace: the Group Center Is on the Other Side
U4 to Schönbrunn, three minutes on foot, and the guide waits with a sign at the Group Center. Twenty-two state rooms, then the gardens at your own pace.
Entry and Guide Together, and the Booking Cannot Be Cancelled
Entry and a guide in one booking, palace rooms and gardens both. Fix the date before you buy: this ticket cannot be cancelled and is not refunded.
Look for the Green Umbrella at the Ehrenhofbrunnen, First Fountain Right
Two hours with headsets and a live guide, the highlights route that cannot be booked without one. Latecomers are not refunded, so arrive 10-15 minutes early.
The Fifteenth-Century Znaim Altarpiece Shares This Ticket with Klimt
One ticket for the Upper Belvedere alone: Klimt's The Kiss, the medieval rooms with the 15th-century Znaim Altarpiece, and 19th and 20th-century art.
Ratings collected by Viator, Tripadvisor and Tiqets
Getting to each palace, and what the ride costs
For Schönbrunn the stop is U4 Schönbrunn, not Hietzing. Hietzing is the stop for the zoo, it is one station further, and it is the most common wrong exit in the city. The U4 does not pass through Stephansplatz, so from the middle of the old town the route is a change at Karlsplatz, from where the palace is nine minutes west (Hietzing is eleven). Trains run every two to seven minutes on school-term weekdays, four to seven in the holidays, and every five minutes at weekends and on public holidays. Above ground, trams 10 and 60 and bus 10A all stop at Schloss Schönbrunn.
The Belvedere is two buildings with two addresses, and that trips people up more than the distance does. For the Upper Belvedere take tram D to Schloss Belvedere, or trams 18 and O and the S-Bahn to Quartier Belvedere, or the U1 to Südtiroler Platz and Hauptbahnhof and walk about fifteen minutes. For the Lower Belvedere, at Rennweg 6, the stops are tram 71 at Unteres Belvedere and tram D at Gußhaustraße. A combined ticket covers both buildings, but nothing carries you between them except your legs.
The fare that matters: a single ride is 3.00 EUR bought digitally and 3.20 on paper, good for 80 minutes in one direction with as many changes as you like and no stopping off. The 1.50 EUR that appears on the Wiener Linien page is the reduced fare, not the standard one, and it is the most reliable way to underestimate a Vienna transport budget. Twenty four hours costs 9.70 EUR digitally, seven days 25.20.
The 48 hour ticket that no longer exists
Anyone planning a long weekend in Vienna will look for a 48 or 72 hour travel card, because every guide written before this year mentions one. Wiener Linien stopped selling both durations on 1 January 2026, in every variant, the Vienna City Card and the EasyCityPass included. The official range now goes from 24 hours straight to seven days.
The confusing part is that the city's own tourism site still lists a 48 hour card at 31 EUR and a 72 hour one at 37, alongside the 24 hour at 19 and the seven day at 39. Two official pages, two different answers, both live on 5 September 2026. The way past it is to buy neither of the disputed durations: two 24 hour tickets for a weekend, or the seven day if the trip runs longer than three days. And keep the two products separate in your head. The Vienna City Card is transport plus discounts and opens no doors; the Vienna PASS at 109 EUR a day is the one that admits you.
There is no priority admission to Schoenbrunn Palace.
| Schönbrunn | Belvedere (Upper) | |
|---|---|---|
| Nearest stop | U4 Schönbrunn, trams 10 and 60, bus 10A | Tram D at Schloss Belvedere, S-Bahn at Quartier Belvedere |
| From the centre | 9 minutes from Karlsplatz on the U4 | Tram D from the Ring, no journey time published |
| Adult door | 30 EUR, or 42 for the whole floor | 23 EUR, or 32 with the Lower Belvedere |
| Time on the ticket | A binding 15 minute slot | An admission hour, then no limit |
| Time inside, per the operator | About 40 or 75 minutes | Not published by the museum |
| Vienna PASS | No priority, slot still required | Fast track, no slot required |
| Last admission | 45 minutes before closing | 30 minutes before closing |
| Listings here | 20, median 73.50 EUR | 17, median 150 EUR |
A morning at Schönbrunn
Schönbrunn opens at 8:30, earlier than either Belvedere building, and the park gates open at 6:30 and cost nothing. That makes it the natural first half of the day, and the earliest slots are also the ones still available at short notice.
How long the morning takes is a question of the calendar rather than of taste. From 27 March to 2 November the four paid attractions in the park are on sale, the Gloriette terrace and the maze among them, and the operator's own estimate for the palace plus those four is three to four hours. Outside those dates they are shut, the palace itself takes 40 or 75 minutes, and the same visit is a morning errand. Nothing about the building changes. The season changes what there is to buy.
What fits into one Vienna day
Two palace interiors in a day is comfortable, and the reason is arithmetic rather than stamina. Schönbrunn's own products run 40 minutes for the shorter route and 75 for the longer one. The Belvedere states no length for a visit anywhere, and the listings we track for it settle at around two hours. Three hours between the two entry times covers the visit, the tram and lunch.
What does not fit is the palace, its garden circuit and the second palace. Between late March and early November Schönbrunn alone is a half day. Add the zoo, a separate ticket behind a separate gate one metro stop further west, and the operator itself calls the combination roughly a day. Between late March and early November, the garden circuit is the part that has to give.
The evening is a third option and it is easy to miss. The concerts in the Orangery run 105 minutes at 58 EUR and start after the palace has closed, so a concert night does not eat into either visit. It does compete with the second palace for the same energy, and the products that bundle a 7 PM palace tour with a concert are the ones that draw the flattest reviews in the Austrian catalogue.
An afternoon at the Belvedere
The Belvedere is the better second stop for one structural reason: the time on the ticket is an entry time, not a limit. The museum's own FAQ says the duration of your stay is unlimited, so a slot missed by twenty minutes on the tram is an inconvenience rather than a loss.
The Upper Belvedere runs 9:00 to 18:00 every day of the year, and 9:00 to 19:00 from 15 July to 31 August 2026. Last admission is 30 minutes before, and the museum closes on the hour rather than shooing people out slowly. The Lower Belvedere opens later, at 10:00, and closes at the same time. Taking both costs 32 EUR instead of the 43 the two separate tickets add up to, and it is the only combination in Vienna where buying more saves money.
Where the reviews actually come from
Vienna's 15,299 reviews look like a broad sample and are not. A single 23 EUR Tiqets ticket for the Upper Belvedere carries 5,215 of them, a third of everything the city has. The next three products together carry another 5,721, all of them Schönbrunn guided visits at 55 to 63 EUR. Past that the numbers fall away fast, and half the catalogue has never been reviewed in volume at all.
This is worth knowing before reading any average. The weighted rating for Vienna is 4.526, slightly under the 4.653 the whole site averages, and it is mostly one entrance ticket's rating wearing the city's name. The spread underneath it is wide: 4.9 on a 150 EUR Schönbrunn tour with 125 reviews at the top, 4.0 on the 17 EUR Lower Belvedere entry ticket with 363 at the bottom. Those two numbers are not a verdict on two buildings 20 minutes apart. They are a verdict on two products.
The wording of the listings deserves the same suspicion. Nine of the 37 put skip the line in the title, and not one of the 37 carries the structured skip-the-line flag that the three providers set when a monument has a separate entrance. In Vienna the phrase means a slot already reserved in your name, and at Schönbrunn that is worth paying for, because the palace's own position is that priority admission does not exist there for anybody. What a reseller sells you is the reservation and the person who meets you at it.
When each palace is worth a whole morning
Neither building closes for the winter, so this is not a table about access. It is a table about how much there is to do once you are there, which is the part that decides whether a palace takes 90 minutes or four hours.
| Month | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SchönbrunnFrom 27 March to 2 November the Gloriette, maze, Privy Garden and Orangery Garden are on sale and the palace plus gardens is a three to four hour visit. In winter the palace alone is 40 to 75 minutes and closes at 17:00. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| BelvedereOpen every day all year, with the Upper Belvedere running to 19:00 from 15 July to 31 August 2026. The stay is unlimited whatever the month, so the season changes the light in the garden and nothing else. Belvedere 21 shuts on Mondays. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
Opening hours and the garden season as published by the two operators and read on 5 September 2026.
Planning two palaces from the middle of Vienna
How do I get to Schönbrunn from the city centre?
U4 to the stop called Schönbrunn, not Hietzing, which is the zoo entrance one station on. From Karlsplatz it takes nine minutes and trains run every two to seven minutes on a weekday. The U4 does not serve Stephansplatz, so from the old town you change at Karlsplatz. Trams 10 and 60 and bus 10A also stop at Schloss Schönbrunn.
And to the Belvedere?
Tram D to Schloss Belvedere for the Upper Belvedere, or trams 18 and O and the S-Bahn to Quartier Belvedere, or the U1 to Südtiroler Platz and Hauptbahnhof with a walk of about fifteen minutes. The Lower Belvedere is a separate address at Rennweg 6: tram 71 to Unteres Belvedere, or tram D to Gußhaustraße.
Which transport ticket should I buy?
A single ride is 3.00 EUR digital or 3.20 on paper and lasts 80 minutes in one direction. Twenty four hours is 9.70 EUR, seven days 25.20. The 1.50 EUR you may see quoted is the reduced fare. Do not go looking for a 48 or 72 hour ticket: they stopped being sold on 1 January 2026.
Can I really do both palaces in one day?
Yes, if the two entry times are about three hours apart. Schönbrunn's own routes take 40 or 75 minutes and the Belvedere works out at around 120 in the listings we track. What does not fit is Schönbrunn plus its garden circuit plus the Belvedere: between 27 March and 2 November the first two alone are three to four hours.
Does the Vienna PASS let me skip the queue?
At the Belvedere yes, and in the way people expect: the card replaces the booking entirely, and an ID has to be shown with it. At Schönbrunn no. The operator states there is no priority admission, a fifteen minute slot has to be booked anyway, and the slot cannot be changed once the booking is done. The pass includes the 30 EUR route, with about 10 EUR to upgrade to the 42 EUR one.
If I only have one afternoon, which palace?
The Belvedere, and the reason is the clock rather than the art. Its ticket sets the hour you go in and nothing else, so a late tram costs you nothing, while a Schönbrunn slot missed by ten minutes is void. The Upper Belvedere is 23 EUR at the door; the 150 EUR median in this catalogue is what a private guide costs on top.
Data verified on. Routes, fares and hours read on 5 September 2026 from schoenbrunn.at, belvedere.at, wienerlinien.at, ticketshop.vor.at, viennapass.de and wien.info. Catalogue figures from 37 listings.