The most beautiful cities in Austria

Welcome to one of Europe’s most beautiful countries. Austria’s landscapes, regions and townscapes provide almost the full range of European variety in the centre of the continent. Austria is often associated, rightly, with winter sports, but there is so much more on offer. Its alpine areas are rugged and picturesque, but that’s far from being the whole story.

Vienna

Visiting Vienna is the ultimate civilised experience. It's a beautiful and cultured city, one of the leaders in most international liveability rankings for years. Its entertainment, lifestyle and excellent transport are part of this.

There are many gracious  palaces, green spaces, museums and beautiful frescoed churches.

Vienna's brilliance comes from the concentration over centuries of wealth, power and patronage associated with the imperial crown, the nobility and the church. The reach of its empires attracted the great and the ambitious.

The Baroque period coincided with the first peak of this patronage. The mostly Baroque palaces of the Hofburg complex, Schloß Schönbrunn and the Belvederes and Baroque churches such as the Peterskirche and Karlskirche are the glories of Vienna. The state hall of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek is remarkable inside and out.

But there are also Gothic highlights and reminders of Romanesque style at the cathedral of St Stephan, the Michaelerkirche, Maria am Gestade and, oldest of all, the Ruprechtskirche. The stark underground remains of the Virgilkapelle are a contrast with the intricacy and colour of the palaces and churches. Other highlights are found in Vienna's Art Nouveau buildings, mainly houses and rail stations, but also the quirky clock Ankeruhr.

The Burggarten, the Volksgarten, Rathauspark and Stadtpark are 19th century green spaces that benefited from the demolition of Vienna's defences. The parks were among their replacements, along with the Ringstraße circuit of boulevards and associated public buildings and cultural institutions. All these helped build the grace and profile of the industrialising city. Other public spaces such as the Karlsplatz-Resselpark area, the Baroque Augarten and the vast expanses of Prater and Donaupark along the Danube make Vienna one of the greenest capitals.

Vienna has been the centre of Western music for centuries and it's hard for travellers to avoid the influence of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Mahler, all of whom were attracted to the city, and the two Johann Strausses, its natives.

The intellectual weight of the city is expressed in names such as Freud, scientists such as Ernst Mach and generations of philosophers, writers and painters in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Vienna coffee houses became places for debate and many of these famous places survive as part of a rich tradition of food, drink, music and museums – more than 90 of them.