Things to do in Vienna, according to people who live here
You live here, you know your three usual spots, and every Friday still ends with a shrug and nobody deciding. Welcome to the club.
What is there to do in Vienna?
Depends how much time you have and what the weather is doing. For an afternoon, cafés, museums and the Donauinsel work. For a full day, go to a district you never set foot in, the tenth for example, or Floridsdorf. And when it pours, Vienna holds up well, because roughly every second building here has something going on inside.
None of the recommendations on this page are ours. These are public Swiva lists that people in Vienna made for themselves, so they would know where to go. That is the difference from the usual rankings: nobody wrote these to sell you anything.
When you are hungry
2 listsThe two lists that get saved most often. Both from people who actually eat out in Vienna, not from a guide sorting places by star ratings.
Restaurants & Foodspots 🍱
Cafés in Wien ☕️🍵
When you want to go out
3 listsCinema, comedy, live music and the stuff in between that you only find out about when someone tells you. The date list is in English but works the same.
Freizeit & Unterhaltung in Wien
Activities in Wien👥
Date Ideas in Vienna That Aren’t Just Drinks
When you want to see the city differently
2 listsFor the days when you feel like you already know everything here. Spoiler: you do not.
Hidden Gems Vienna 🇦🇹
Geschichte Wien & Österreich 🇦🇹
Right for the season
1 listVienna changes completely four times a year. This list is for the cooler half.
Herbst in Wien 🍂
And when Vienna gets too small
1 listThe rest of Austria is surprisingly close by train.
Activities in ganz Österreich
Why there are no sights on this page
Schönbrunn, Prater, Stephansdom. You know them. They are on every page that comes up for "what to do in Vienna", and they are all correct and all identical.
What those pages never tell you: where you can sit on a Tuesday at 3pm without it being packed. Which cinema still shows films in the original language. Where you take visitors who have already been to Vienna twice. That is exactly what people make lists for, and that is what is here.
The lists are not curated, edited or sponsored. We only collected them and sorted them by occasion, so you do not have to scroll through all of them.
Vienna in the rain and in winter
The most common Vienna search after the weather forecast: what to do when it pours. The honest answer is that Vienna is built for it better than most cities. Coffee houses where you can sit for hours, museums that are free on the first Sunday, baths, libraries, and half the city sits on a metro line.
Several rainy-day options are hiding in the lists above, they are just not labelled as such. If that is what you are after, the leisure list is the best starting point, because nearly everything on it has a roof.
How to turn this into a list of your own
Every list here opens in Swiva and can be saved. From then on it is yours: throw things out, add your own, share it with your people, and nobody needs an account to look at it.
The part that actually works: when you cannot decide, you swipe through the list and Swiva shows you what you both said yes to. It sounds like a gimmick and it is the only reason Friday evening stopped ending in a debate.
What this page is not
Not a travel guide. If you are in Vienna for three days and want to see the classics, Vienna Tourism or a travel blog will serve you better. They do that well and we are not trying to compete.
Also not a database of opening hours, prices or bookings. The lists carry names and sometimes a link, that is it. For anything beyond that you still need Google Maps or the venue's own page.
And the selection is lopsided. These are the lists that happen to exist, not a representative cross-section of all 23 districts. The first district barely shows up, because hardly anyone goes there voluntarily.
A few quick answers
- Who writes these lists?
- Swiva users who set their list to public. Each list shows who made it. We do not add entries and nobody pays to be on one.
- Do I need the app to see the lists?
- No. Every list opens in the browser and shows a selection of its entries. For the full list and for saving it you need Swiva.
- Are the lists up to date?
- They are maintained by whoever owns them, so it varies. Each list shows when it was last changed. Places close down and we do not hear about it, so a quick check before you go never hurts.
- Can I get my own Vienna list onto this page?
- Make it in Swiva, set it to public and drop us a line on the feedback page. If it has a title, a description and enough entries, we will add it.
- Why are some lists in English?
- Because that is Vienna. People here write in whatever language they think in. We do not translate anything, because that kills the tone.
