Luxury · 6-hour walk · Vienna
The Ringstrasse and the Belvedere in six hours
The imperial museums, the parliament quarter, then the palace with the Klimts and the city's best formal garden.
Franz Joseph pulled down the city walls in 1857 and built a boulevard of monuments on the space, which is why everything on this route is enormous and roughly the same age. It is the expensive Vienna: two of the great European collections, a Baroque palace, and a concert hall you should book before you arrive. The Ring tram covers the gap to the Belvedere in ten minutes.
The route, stop by stop
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Kunsthistorisches Museum
The largest Bruegel collection anywhere, and the Kunstkammer downstairs is the better half if you only have an hour. The café under the cupola is a genuine reason to stay.
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MuseumsQuartier
The imperial stables turned into one of the biggest cultural complexes in Europe. The Leopold holds the Schieles; the courtyards are free and full of people doing nothing.
40 min here Walk here → -
Austrian Parliament Building
Reopened in 2023 after a five-year rebuild. Greek revival on the outside because the Greeks invented the thing happening inside, which was the 1874 argument for it.
20 min here Walk here → -
Belvedere Palace
Arrive by tram from the previous stop
Tram D from the Ring drops you at the upper palace. Klimt's Kiss is here and is smaller and better than the reproductions suggest. The garden between the two palaces is free.
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Karlskirche
The dome fresco is normally 70 metres up; a lift installed for restoration puts you level with it, which no other Baroque church in Europe offers.
30 min here Walk here → -
Stadtpark
The gilded Johann Strauss statue is the most photographed object in Vienna and the park around it is where the Ringstrasse walk properly ends.
25 min here Walk here →
More in Vienna
Every walking route in Vienna, or the full Vienna guide for where to stay and what a day costs.