Eleven days from Munich to Vienna: down the Danube, past Salzburg without stopping

Three nights in Munich, two in Regensburg, two in Linz and three in Vienna, on regional trains and one railjet, with about six hours of travel across the whole eleven days.

Copy this itinerary
Length
11 days, 10 nights
Where you stay
Munich, Regensburg, Linz, Vienna
Places
29 across 11 days
1234
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Almost everybody who goes from Munich to Vienna goes via Salzburg, and Salzburg is worth it, and it is also the single most crowded small city in the German-speaking world in July. This route goes the other way round, north along the Danube, and picks up a pair of river cities that most people only ever see from a train window.

Regensburg has the largest intact medieval centre north of the Alps, about fifteen hundred listed buildings, a stone bridge that was finished in 1146 and a sausage kitchen beside it that has been grilling since the bridge was under construction. It was the Roman frontier, then it was where the parliament of the Holy Roman Empire sat continuously for a hundred and forty-three years, and it takes about ninety minutes to reach from Munich.

Linz is the one people apologise for suggesting. It is an industrial city, it has Austria's best museum of digital art, a tram up a mountain that is the steepest of its kind in Europe, and it is the nearest base to Mauthausen. The eleven days end in Vienna with three nights, arriving in the early afternoon rather than at midnight.

Highlights

  • A wave in a Munich park with a queue of surfers waiting their turn, in the middle of a landlocked country
  • A twelfth-century stone bridge over the Danube, with a sausage kitchen at the end of it that fed the men who built it
  • A Greek temple on a hill above the Danube, put there by a Bavarian king to hold busts of every German he admired
  • The steepest mountain tram in Europe, hauling itself up out of Linz on plain steel wheels
  • Klimt's Beethoven Frieze in a basement under a gilded dome that Vienna nicknamed the golden cabbage
  • A Vienna cemetery with more people in it than the city has living residents, and the composers all in one plot

Where to stay

Munich, three nights

Munich is a rich, orderly, conservative city that also has a river running through it with a surf wave in it and drinks more beer per head than almost anywhere on earth, and it does not find that contradictory. The old centre is compact and almost entirely rebuilt: eighty per cent of it was destroyed by 1945 and the city voted to put it back as it had been rather than start again.

Three nights covers the centre, one royal palace, one great picture gallery and one long afternoon in a park. It leaves out the Alps, the lakes and Dachau, any of which is a full day. Stay near the river or in Haidhausen to be a walk from everything without paying centre prices.

Regensburg, two nights

By train from Munich, Munich Central Station to Regensburg Central Station, about 105 km.

The Romans put a legionary fort here in 179 and one of its gates is still standing in a wall on a side street. In the Middle Ages the city grew rich on the salt and river trade, built patrician tower houses in imitation of the Italians, and then stopped growing, which is why it never knocked itself down. It came through the war with very little damage and was listed by UNESCO in 2006.

It is small, and student-heavy, and it has more places to sit outside with a beer than any city of a hundred and fifty thousand people needs. Two nights is right: one afternoon for the bridge and the cathedral, one full day for the Imperial Diet and the boat downriver to the strangest building in Bavaria.

Linz, two nights

By train from Regensburg, Regensburg Central Station to Linz Hauptbahnhof, about 180 km.

Linz spent the twentieth century as a steel town and the twenty-first deciding to be something else. It has a museum of digital art on the riverbank that is better than anything comparable in Vienna, a modern art gallery opposite it, an enormous baroque square, and an electric tram that climbs a mountain on plain steel wheels.

It also has a past it does not hide. Hitler grew up nearby, considered Linz his home town and planned to rebuild it as the cultural capital of his empire, and the concentration camp at Mauthausen is twenty minutes down the river. Two nights lets you give the memorial a proper day and still see the city.

Vienna, three nights

By train from Linz, Linz Hauptbahnhof to Wien Hauptbahnhof, about 155 km.

Arriving in Vienna from Linz takes an hour and a quarter, and after ten days in cities of a few hundred thousand people the scale of it lands hard: a ring road built on the line of the walls, a palace at each end, and public buildings put up in the 1870s to look like the capital of fifty million people, which is what it was.

Three nights, using them on the parts of Vienna that are not on the first-visit list: the library hall, the Secession basement, the cemetery where the composers are, and the ferris wheel of 1897. Stay inside the ring if you can afford it, in the fourth or seventh district if you cannot.

Day by day

Day 1 in Munich

Marienplatz, the twin domes and a market with a maypole

The city hall on the main square is not medieval, whatever it looks like: it went up between 1867 and 1908 in a neo-Gothic style chosen to make Munich look older than it is. The clock in the tower plays at eleven and twelve, and at five as well from March to October, and thirty-two life-sized figures turn through a jousting tournament and a coopers' dance for about fifteen minutes. It is the most famous underwhelming thing in Bavaria and the square fills up for it anyway.

Two minutes away stand the twin brick towers that are the symbol of the city, capped with green onion domes added in 1525 because the money for spires ran out. Munich still has a rule that nothing in the centre may be built taller than they are. Inside the west door, look for the black mark in the floor that the story calls the devil's footprint.

Then the food market, running since 1807, with a maypole in the middle, a hundred and forty stalls and a beer garden under chestnut trees where you may bring your own bread and cheese and buy only the beer. That is not a local custom; it is written into the rules.

  1. 14:30

    Neues Rathaus

    Other

    Neo-Gothic city hall of 1867 to 1908 with the carillon in the tower, playing at 11:00 and 12:00 all year and at 17:00 from March to October, with 32 figures and 43 bells. The lift up the tower costs a few euros and the queue is short.

  2. 15:45

    Frauenkirche

    Religious

    The brick cathedral of 1468 to 1488, its towers finished with green domes in 1525 when the funds for spires ran out. No building in central Munich may exceed their height. Free; the tower lift is seasonal.

  3. 17:00

    Viktualienmarkt

    Architecture

    Munich's open-air food market since 1807, about 140 stalls of cheese, game, fish and flowers around a painted maypole, with a beer garden under the chestnuts where you may bring your own food and buy only the drink.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner in a beer hall or a garden

    Eat

    The famous one behind the Marienplatz is a coach-party institution and everybody should see it once. For actual dinner, the halls and gardens in Haidhausen and around the Isartor are better and cheaper.

With more time: The two surviving medieval city gates stand ten minutes apart on the old wall line, and walking between them takes you through the parts of the centre where people actually live rather than shop.

Day 2 in Munich

The Wittelsbach palace, a church built between two houses, and a wave in the park

The Residenz was the seat of the Bavarian dukes, electors and kings from 1385 to 1918, and grew by accretion into the largest city palace in Germany: ten courtyards and about a hundred and thirty rooms open to the public. Do not try to do it all. The room to see is the barrel-vaulted hall of 1571 built for the ducal collection of antique busts, eighty metres of painted ceiling with the floor dropped to make it grander, and it is the oldest Renaissance interior north of the Alps.

Then walk five minutes to a church wedged between two ordinary houses on a shopping street. Two brothers built it in the 1730s at their own expense, next door to their own home, initially for themselves, and it is late baroque taken past the point of restraint: gold, stucco, a ceiling fresco lit from a hidden window, and barely eight metres of width to hold it all.

Spend the afternoon in the park north of the palace, which is bigger than Central Park and was laid out in 1789 as one of the first public parks in Europe. At its southern end a standing wave forms where a canal shoots under a bridge, and surfers have been riding it since the 1970s, in wetsuits, in February, in the middle of a country with no coast. There is a queue, an etiquette and often an audience.

  1. 09:30

    Residenz

    Historic

    The Wittelsbach city palace, seat of Bavaria's rulers from 1385 to 1918, with ten courtyards and around 130 rooms open. The Antiquarium of 1571 is 80 metres of vaulted painted ceiling and the oldest Renaissance room north of the Alps. Allow two hours and skip the rest.

  2. 12:30

    Asamkirche

    Religious

    A private church of the 1730s squeezed between two houses on Sendlinger Strasse, built by the Asam brothers for themselves and only about eight metres wide. Free, dim, and completely over the top. Ten minutes is enough and worth the detour.

  3. 13:15

    Lunch at a beer garden in the park

    Eat

    The gardens in the English Garden serve roast pork, pretzels and litre glasses at long shared tables. Pay at the counter, keep the receipt, and rinse your own glass at the tap if you want the deposit back.

  4. 15:00

    Surfing on the Eisbach

    Other

    A permanent standing wave where the Eisbach shoots under a bridge at the southern tip of the English Garden, surfed year round since the 1970s and legal since 2010. Free to watch, cold and genuinely dangerous to ride. Best light in the late afternoon.

With more time: The park runs four kilometres north from the wave, with a Chinese pagoda halfway up and meadows where the city sunbathes with no clothes on and no fuss made about it.

Day 3 in Munich

A summer palace, Duerer's self-portrait and the Blue Rider

Take tram 17 out to the summer palace, begun in 1664 and extended by three generations until the front measured most of a kilometre. Two things are worth the ticket. The first is a gallery of thirty-six portraits of women that Ludwig I commissioned between 1827 and 1850 without much regard for rank, including a shoemaker's daughter and the dancer whose affair with him helped cost him his throne. The second is the coach house, where the state carriages and sleighs of Ludwig II are kept, gilded to a degree that is hard to describe and impossible to justify.

In the afternoon, the old picture gallery in the museum quarter. It was built in 1836 to hold the Wittelsbach collection and holds the largest group of Rubens anywhere, an Altdorfer battle scene that is one of the strangest paintings of the sixteenth century, and Duerer's self-portrait of 1500 in which he painted himself, deliberately, as Christ.

Finish next door, in a villa with a bright yellow extension. Gabriele Muenter kept the paintings of the Blue Rider group hidden in her cellar through the Nazi years and gave them to this museum in 1957, which is why the world's best collection of Kandinsky, Marc and Muenter is in Munich rather than anywhere else.

  1. 09:15

    Schloss Nymphenburg

    Historic

    The Wittelsbach summer residence, with a front nearly a kilometre long, a park behind it and the royal coach collection in the stables. The gallery of beauties holds 36 portraits commissioned by Ludwig I. Tram 17 from the centre, about 20 minutes.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch in Maxvorstadt

    Eat

    The streets around the university, between the palace and the museums, are full of student cafes and lunch menus at a fraction of centre prices.

  3. 14:00

    Alte Pinakothek

    Culture

    Klenze's gallery of 1836 holding the Wittelsbach old masters: the largest Rubens collection anywhere, Altdorfer's Battle of Alexander, and Duerer's 1500 self-portrait staring straight out at you. Two hours, and Sunday entry costs one euro.

  4. 16:30

    Lenbachhaus

    Culture

    A nineteenth-century villa with a gold extension, holding the world's largest Blue Rider collection thanks to Gabriele Muenter, who hid the paintings through the Nazi years and gave them to the city in 1957. Kandinsky, Marc, Macke and Muenter herself.

Day 4 in Regensburg

North to the Danube, a bridge of 1146 and sausages beside it

Ninety minutes north through Landshut and you are on the Danube at its northernmost point in Europe, which is why the Romans stopped here and built a fort. Regensburg station is ten minutes' walk from the old town and the old town is ten minutes across.

Go to the bridge first. It was built between 1135 and 1146, it was the only crossing of the Danube for hundreds of kilometres in either direction for eight hundred years, and armies of the Second and Third Crusades used it. Sixteen arches, about three hundred metres, closed to traffic and repaired continuously ever since.

At the town end of it, in a low building with a chimney, is a kitchen that has been grilling pork sausages over beech charcoal since the bridge was under construction. Six sausages with sauerkraut and sweet mustard, eaten at a wooden table with the river going past, is lunch and also a small piece of the twelfth century.

Then the cathedral, begun in 1273 in the French Gothic manner and left without its spires until 1869, when Bavaria finally paid for them. Its boys' choir has been singing here in some form since 975, which if true makes it the oldest such choir in the world, and it sings the Sunday morning mass.

  1. 10:00

    Train to Regensburg

    Travel

    Munich Hauptbahnhof to Regensburg, about an hour and a half, hourly, no reservation. Two people travelling together should buy the Bavarian day ticket instead of two singles.

  2. 13:00

    Stone Bridge

    Architecture

    Sixteen arches and about 300 metres, finished in 1146, and for eight hundred years the only fixed crossing of the Danube for a very long way in either direction. Pedestrians only. Walk to the far side for the view back at the towers.

  3. 14:00

    Historic Sausage Kitchen

    Other

    A charcoal grill in a low building at the bridgehead, serving pork sausages with sauerkraut and its own sweet mustard since the bridge was being built. Order by the half dozen, sit at a table outside, and expect a queue at one o'clock.

  4. 15:30

    Regensburg Cathedral

    Religious

    French Gothic begun in 1273 and finished with its spires only in 1869, the best Gothic building in Bavaria. Stained glass from the fourteenth century in the transepts. The cathedral choir, founded in 975, sings the main Sunday mass.

  5. 19:00

    Dinner in the old town

    Eat

    There are beer gardens on both banks and one on an island. Regensburg is a university town, so the prices two streets off the cathedral square are student prices.

With more time: A Roman gate of 179 stands embedded in a wall on a lane behind the cathedral, half sunk below the modern street level, and it is free, unfenced and easy to walk past without noticing.

Day 5 in Regensburg

The parliament that sat for a hundred and forty-three years, and a Greek temple upriver

The old town hall is where the Holy Roman Empire did its paperwork. From 1663 to 1806 the Perpetual Diet sat here without ever formally adjourning: envoys of the princes, the bishops and the free cities, arguing about precedence in a room with three levels of seating that made clear who ranked above whom. The guided tour takes you through the chamber and down into the torture rooms below, which were part of the same building and the same system.

In the afternoon, take the boat. It runs downriver from below the stone bridge to a hill on the north bank, and on top of the hill is a full-size Doric temple in white marble, built between 1830 and 1842 by Ludwig I of Bavaria as a hall of fame for the German-speaking peoples at a time when there was no Germany to speak of. Inside are around a hundred and thirty busts and about a hundred plaques, and additions are still made every few years. Climbing the terrace steps from the river is part of the effect and there are a great many of them.

Come back for the evening. The city drinks by the water, and the beer garden on the north bank has been there long enough not to care whether you find it.

  1. 10:00

    Old Town Hall and Museum of the Imperial Perpetual Diet

    Visit

    Where the Perpetual Diet of the Holy Roman Empire sat from 1663 until the empire ended in 1806, with the original chamber, its graded seating and the dungeons underneath. Guided tours only, in English several times a day, about an hour.

  2. 12:00

    Lunch by the river

    Eat

    Eat lightly before the boat. The terraces along the Danube on the old town side do salads and cold plates, and the ice cream in Regensburg is disproportionately good.

  3. 13:30

    Walhalla memorial

    Historic

    A white marble Doric temple on a hill above the Danube, built for Ludwig I between 1830 and 1842 as a hall of fame for German history, holding some 130 busts and still adding them. Boats run from below the stone bridge and take about 45 minutes each way.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner in a beer garden

    Eat

    The gardens on the north bank and on the island keep going until it gets cold. Bring a jumper: the Danube makes its own weather in the evening.

With more time: The palace on the south side of the old town belongs to the Thurn und Taxis family, who ran the imperial postal service for three centuries and still live in part of it. Tours go through the state rooms; the abbey church next door is free and worth ten minutes on its own.

Day 6 in Linz

Along the river into Austria, and a tram up a mountain

Two and a half hours with a change at Passau, where three rivers meet and the town is squeezed onto the spit between them. After Passau the line follows the Danube closely for the run into Austria, and the right-hand side has the water.

Linz's main square is enormous, thirteen thousand square metres of it, with a twenty-metre column of white marble in the middle put up in 1723 in thanks for surviving plague, fire and invasion. The city hall on one side is where a young Anton Bruckner came to work as cathedral organist in 1856, and the old cathedral where he played is two minutes away.

In the late afternoon take the tram up the mountain. It leaves from the main square, crosses the river, and then climbs two hundred and fifty metres on ordinary steel wheels with no rack and no cable, which makes it the steepest adhesion railway in Europe. At the top is a pilgrimage church with two towers that is the emblem of the region, and a terrace looking back down over the whole Danube valley.

Come down after sunset and eat by the river.

  1. 10:00

    Train to Linz

    Travel

    Regensburg to Linz Hauptbahnhof, about two and a half hours with one change at Passau. Sit on the right after Passau for the river.

  2. 13:00

    Late lunch on the Hauptplatz

    Eat

    Drop the bag first. The square has terraces on every side and the side streets behind it do the same food for less.

  3. 14:30

    Trinity Column

    Other

    A twenty-metre baroque column of white marble completed in 1723, standing in the middle of one of the largest enclosed squares in central Europe. It gives thanks for deliverance from plague, fire and invasion, which is three more things than most columns manage.

  4. 15:30

    Old Cathedral

    Religious

    Built between 1669 and 1678 to designs by Carlone, and the church where Anton Bruckner was organist from 1856. The instrument he played is still in the gallery and there are short recitals on summer weekdays.

  5. 17:00

    Pöstlingberg tram

    Visit

    Opened in 1898 and climbing 255 metres out of the city on plain steel wheels, with no rack and no cable to help it and running from the main square. At the top are a twin-towered pilgrimage church and a terrace over the Danube valley.

Day 7 in Linz

Digital art in the morning, and the quarry in the afternoon

The centre on the north bank has been running a festival of art and technology since 1979, long before that combination was fashionable, and the museum that grew out of it is the reason to give Linz a day. There is a room with eight walls of projection and floor projection under your feet, a laboratory floor where you can look at your own cells, and a great deal that is playful rather than solemn. Two hours, and take the lift up for the view over the river.

In the afternoon, the train to Mauthausen. The camp was opened in 1938, four weeks after the annexation of Austria, on a hill above a granite quarry, and prisoners were made to carry cut stone up a flight of a hundred and eighty-six steps. Around ninety thousand people died here and in its subcamps. The site is a memorial, entry is free, the buildings and the quarry stairs are open, and the audio guide is the way to do it.

This is not a half-hour stop. Allow the whole afternoon, take the earlier train back rather than the last one, and do not plan anything else for the evening.

  1. 10:00

    Ars Electronica Center

    Culture

    The museum that grew out of the Ars Electronica festival, running since 1979: an eight-wall projection room, a biology laboratory open to visitors, robotics and a good deal that children take over. Two hours. Closed Mondays, open late on Thursdays.

  2. 12:30

    Early lunch before the train

    Eat

    Eat near the museum or at the station. There is nothing at the memorial and you will not want to eat there.

  3. 13:30

    Mauthausen concentration camp memorial

    Visit

    The concentration camp above the granite quarry, opened in 1938 and now a national memorial. Entry is free; the audio guide is not and is worth it. The 186 quarry steps prisoners carried stone up are still there. Trains from Linz take about 25 minutes.

With more time: Coming back into Linz in the evening, the modern art museum on the south bank is lit from within after dark and stays open until six most days, and its collection of Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka is small and very good.

Day 8 in Vienna

Into Vienna, a plague church and a golden cabbage

An hour and a quarter on the railjet and you are at Wien Hauptbahnhof, which is ten minutes on the underground from the middle of the city and a five minute walk from the first thing worth seeing.

The church on Karlsplatz was promised by the emperor during the plague of 1713 and took twenty-four years to build. It is baroque doing several things at once: a Roman portico, a green dome, and two enormous columns copied from Trajan's in Rome and carved with the life of a saint. A lift and a scaffold platform inside take you up under the dome to look at the ceiling fresco from three metres away, which is the only place in Vienna you can do that.

Five minutes west stands a small white building of 1898 with a dome of three thousand gilded laurel leaves that the city immediately nicknamed the golden cabbage. It was built by artists who had walked out of the official salon, and over the door is their motto: to every age its art, to art its freedom. In the basement is Klimt's Beethoven Frieze, thirty-four metres of painting made in 1902 for a single exhibition and meant to be destroyed afterwards.

Then walk into the old city for the evening. The cathedral is at the middle of it and the south tower is 136 metres of pierced Gothic stonework, and the roof, retiled after the fire of 1945, carries a double eagle picked out in glazed tiles.

  1. 10:00

    Train to Vienna

    Travel

    Linz Hauptbahnhof to Wien Hauptbahnhof, an hour and a quarter, twice an hour on the railjet. Advance fares are a third of the walk-up price; reserve a seat at weekends.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch near Karlsplatz

    Eat

    Drop the bag. The streets behind the technical university do good cheap lunch aimed at students rather than at anybody arriving with a suitcase.

  3. 14:00

    Karlskirche

    Religious

    Promised during the plague of 1713 and finished in 1737 by Fischer von Erlach, with a Roman portico, a green dome and two columns modelled on Trajan's. A lift inside carries you up to a platform level with the dome fresco.

  4. 15:30

    Wiener Secession

    Culture

    The 1898 exhibition hall of the artists who walked out of the establishment, with a dome of 3,000 gilded laurel leaves. Downstairs is Klimt's Beethoven Frieze of 1902, 34 metres long, painted for one show and never meant to survive.

  5. 17:30

    Stephansdom

    Religious

    The Gothic cathedral at the centre of the city, its south tower 136 metres of pierced stonework and its roof relaid after the 1945 fire with a double eagle in glazed tiles. Free at the back of the nave; the towers and catacombs are ticketed.

  6. 20:00

    Dinner in the seventh district

    Eat

    Neubau, behind the museum quarter, is where Vienna eats without performing. Small rooms, wine by the quarter litre, no dress code and no tourist menus.

Day 9 in Vienna

The most beautiful room in Vienna, a hare, and a great deal of Schiele

The imperial library was built between 1723 and 1726 as a single hall eighty metres long, with a dome fresco, walnut shelving, and about two hundred thousand books bound in the same leather. It is the biggest baroque library in Europe and it is the room people photograph and then stand in for twenty minutes without saying anything. Go at opening.

Round the corner, the Albertina occupies the last surviving Habsburg residential palace on the ring, and its state rooms are open along with the exhibitions. Somewhere in the graphic collection is Duerer's watercolour of a young hare, painted in 1502, which is too fragile to show more than rarely; the permanent floor of Monet to Picasso is always up and the temporary shows are usually excellent.

Spend the afternoon in the museum quarter across the road, in the white limestone box that holds the largest collection of Egon Schiele in the world, plus Klimt, Kokoschka and the applied arts of Vienna around 1900. Schiele died at twenty-eight in the influenza pandemic of 1918, three days after his wife, and the last room is difficult in the right way.

The courtyards outside are full of benches and students, and are where the city sits in the evening.

  1. 10:00

    Austrian National Library

    Culture

    The state hall of the imperial library, built 1723 to 1726, eighty metres long under a painted dome, with around 200,000 leather-bound volumes and Venetian globes at the ends. The largest baroque library in Europe. Go at opening; it is small and it fills.

  2. 11:30

    Albertina

    Culture

    The last Habsburg palace on the ring, with the state apartments open above one of the great print collections. Duerer's Young Hare of 1502 lives here and is shown rarely; the Monet to Picasso floor is permanent.

  3. 13:45

    Lunch in the museum quarter

    Eat

    The courtyards have cheap counters, benches and a great many students, and after two hours of galleries the fresh air is the point.

  4. 15:00

    Leopold Museum

    Culture

    The largest Schiele collection anywhere, with Klimt, Kokoschka and Viennese design of the same years, in a white limestone block opened in 2001. Two hours, and the top floor has the views.

With more time: The opera sells standing places ninety minutes before each performance for less than the price of two coffees, and they are not available online. If there is anything on, join that queue instead of eating early.

Day 10 in Vienna

Tram 71 to the composers, a house with trees in the windows, and a wheel of 1897

Vienna's central cemetery opened in 1874, covers three hundred and thirty hectares and holds about three million people, which is more than the living population of the city. Viennese slang for dying is to take the 71, after the tram that goes there, and the tram is still the way to arrive.

Go to group 32A. Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Johann Strauss the younger, Gluck and Schoenberg are laid out in a semicircle, with a memorial to Mozart in the middle, who is not there: he was buried in a common grave elsewhere in 1791 and nobody knows exactly where. It is a twenty-minute walk from the main gate and there are maps at the entrance. The Jewish section further along is deliberately unrestored, overgrown, and quieter still.

Come back into town in the afternoon for the apartment block Friedensreich Hundertwasser designed for the city in the mid 1980s: no straight lines, uneven floors, two hundred and fifty trees growing out of the windows and the roof, and real tenants inside who did not ask to be photographed. You look from the street.

Finish across the canal at the funfair, where the ferris wheel has been turning since 1897. Fifteen wooden cabins, sixty-five metres, and a slow twenty-minute revolution over the park and the city. It has been in more films than any other object in Vienna.

  1. 09:30

    Zentralfriedhof

    Historic

    Opened in 1874, 330 hectares, about three million burials, more than the living city. Group 32A holds Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Strauss and Schoenberg in a semicircle around a monument to Mozart, who is buried somewhere else entirely. Tram 71 to gate 2.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch on the way back

    Eat

    The tram passes through Simmering and Landstrasse, both of them ordinary residential Vienna with lunch prices to match.

  3. 14:00

    Hundertwasserhaus

    Other

    Municipal housing of 1983 to 1985 designed by Hundertwasser, with no straight lines, undulating floors and 250 trees growing out of the facade and roof. People live in it, so you look from the pavement. Free, five minutes from the canal.

  4. 17:00

    Riesenrad

    Architecture

    Built in 1897, burnt out in 1945 and rebuilt with half its original cabins, sixty-five metres high and slow enough that a full turn takes about twenty minutes. Buy the plain ticket rather than the dinner cabin.

With more time: The park behind the wheel runs five kilometres out to the Danube along a dead straight avenue of chestnuts, closed to cars, with a horse-drawn carriage or a bike for hire at the near end and beer gardens most of the way.

Day 11 in Vienna

A baroque church, an organ and the way out

Two minutes off the main shopping street, in a small square that most people walk past, stands an oval baroque church of 1733 with a green copper dome and a gilded interior that is dark until your eyes adjust. It is free, it is almost never crowded, and there is an organ recital most afternoons, along with the occasional one in the morning.

That is the right last hour: fifteen minutes of very loud baroque music and then coffee, before the airport.

The train to the airport leaves from Wien Mitte and takes sixteen minutes on the express or a little longer and rather less money on the ordinary S-Bahn. If you would rather keep going by rail, Budapest is two and a half hours east and Prague four hours north.

  1. 10:00

    Peterskirche

    Religious

    An oval baroque church of 1701 to 1733 tucked off the Graben, with a green dome, a gilded interior and free organ recitals most days. Ten minutes inside is enough, and it is the least crowded good thing in the first district.

  2. 11:15

    Last coffee

    Eat

    Order a Melange, take a newspaper off the rack and sit for as long as the departure allows. Nobody will hurry you and nobody will bring the bill until you ask.

  3. 13:00

    To the airport or onward

    Travel

    The airport train runs from Wien Mitte in sixteen minutes; the ordinary S-Bahn takes twenty-five and costs a third as much. For onward trains, Budapest is two and a half hours and Prague four.

Before you go

The three train journeys

Munich to Regensburg is about an hour and a half on a regional train, roughly hourly, no reservation needed. If two of you are travelling, the Bayern-Ticket day pass covers the whole journey for both and costs less than one full fare.

Regensburg to Linz takes around two and a half hours with one change at Passau, and it follows the Danube for most of the way. This is the leg to sit on the right hand side for.

Linz to Vienna is an hour and a quarter on a railjet, running twice an hour, which after ten days of regional trains feels like cheating. Book this one in advance for the cheap fare and reserve a seat on Friday and Sunday.

Money, tickets and the border

Euros throughout, and cards everywhere. The German and Austrian railways sell each other's tickets but their apps price things differently, so check both for the Regensburg to Linz leg.

There is no border check between Bavaria and Austria and the train does not stop for it. Both countries fine you on the spot for travelling without a valid ticket, and the conductors on Austrian regional trains are thorough.

What to book

The Munich Residenz and the Alte Pinakothek take walk-ins. Nymphenburg sells a combined ticket at the gate and rarely queues.

Book the Linz to Vienna railjet in advance, and if you want to see Mauthausen with a guide, book that slot on the memorial's own site: the site itself is free and open, but English audio guides and guided tours run to a timetable. In Vienna, standing places at the opera cannot be booked at all and go on sale ninety minutes before the curtain.

When to come

May, June and September. The Danube valley is at its best with the trees out, the beer gardens and Heuriger taverns are open, and none of these four cities is unbearable in the heat except Vienna in August.

Late September brings two things worth planning around: Munich's beer festival, which starts in the third week of September and doubles the price of a bed, and the wine harvest in the villages on the hills above Vienna. Avoid the first of those unless it is the reason you came.

Eating and drinking

Bavaria and Austria eat the same things under different names and argue about which does them better. Order Schweinsbraten with a dumpling in Munich, sausages off a charcoal grill in Regensburg and Tafelspitz in Vienna.

Munich drinks beer by the litre in gardens where you may bring your own food and buy only the drink, which is a genuine legal right and worth using. Austria drinks white wine, and above Vienna the growers sell their own by the glass at long tables under the vines from spring to autumn.

Six hours of train across eleven days, from a Bavarian capital that rebuilt itself exactly as it had been, through a medieval river city that never needed to, past a camp above a quarry, and into Vienna. It is the Danube corridor without the coach parties, and the two stops in the middle are the ones people write to say they were not expecting.

Go in May, June or September, book the last leg in advance, and give Mauthausen the whole afternoon.

Go deeper on one city

Each of these covers a single stop on this route in its own right.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Why not go via Salzburg?
Because a great many people already do, and because the two cities on this route are more interesting than their reputations. Regensburg has the largest surviving medieval centre north of the Alps and a fraction of the visitors, and Linz has the best digital art museum in the German-speaking world and the nearest access to Mauthausen. If Salzburg matters to you, take the fast line and add two nights there instead of Linz; the two cannot easily be combined without doubling back.
Is Linz really worth two nights?
One of the two is really for Mauthausen, which needs an afternoon and leaves nothing in you for anything afterwards. The other buys the technology museum, the tram up the mountain and an evening on the river. If Mauthausen is not something you want to do, a single night there is enough and the one you save is best added to Vienna.
How much train is this in total?
About six hours spread over eleven days: ninety minutes to Regensburg, two and a half hours to Linz, and an hour and a quarter to Vienna. None of it is a night train, none of it needs a connection tighter than twenty minutes, and only the last leg benefits from booking well ahead.
Can I do this in reverse from Vienna?
Yes, and it works nearly as well. The only argument for going west to east is that the trains get faster and the cities get bigger as you go, which makes the last three days feel like an arrival rather than a wind-down. Flights into Munich and out of Vienna are usually straightforward to combine.
Can I copy this and change it?
Yes. The most common edits are a fourth night in Vienna, swapping a Munich day for Dachau or the Alps, and adding two nights in the Wachau valley between Linz and Vienna, where the Danube runs between terraced vineyards and there is a Benedictine abbey at Melk the size of a small town.