Sisi Museum, Hofburg Imperial Apartments & Gardens Guided Tour Vienna

The Hofburg, Vienna's Imperial Palace

For more than 600 years, from the 13th century until the end of the monarchy in 1918, the Hofburg was the power centre of the Habsburg dynasty. Every ruler added a wing, so today the complex spreads over 18 wings and 19 courtyards and holds the office of the Austrian president, the National Library, the Imperial Treasury and the Spanish Riding School.

A Hofburg Palace tour with a guide makes sense of this maze of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and 19th-century buildings. Getting to the Hofburg is easy: it sits in the first district, a short walk from Stephansplatz and the Herrengasse underground station, and the Michaelerplatz entrance under the green dome is the classic starting point for visitors.

The Sisi Museum and the Legend of Empress Elisabeth

Elisabeth of Bavaria married Emperor Franz Joseph in 1854 at just sixteen, and her restless, unconventional life ended when she was assassinated in Geneva in 1898. The Sisi Museum, opened in 2004, gathers around 300 of her personal objects, from parasols, fans and gloves to reconstructions of her famous gowns, her death mask and a reconstruction of her private railway carriage.

The rooms are dark, narrow and often busy, which is why Sisi Museum tickets with a timed slot and a guide who knows the story are worth having. Is the Sisi Museum worth visiting? If you want to understand the woman behind the myth of the fairy-tale empress, yes: our guide separates the film romance from the lonely, fitness-obsessed reality.

The Imperial Apartments of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth

From the museum the route leads straight into the Imperial Apartments, the rooms where the imperial couple actually lived and worked. You see Franz Joseph's audience chamber, where he received ordinary citizens twice a week, his study and the plain iron bed of a famously disciplined emperor, and a dining room with the table laid as for a court banquet.

Elisabeth's side is very different: her dressing room, where her ankle-length hair took hours to style, and her gymnastics room with a climbing ladder and rings, unheard of for a woman of her rank. Visiting the Imperial Apartments in Vienna with fast-track entry saves the ticket queue, and about 105 minutes inside the palace is enough to see everything without rushing.

Heldenplatz, the Spanish Riding School and the Burggarten

Back outside, the guide takes you through the palace courtyards to a photo stop at the Spanish Riding School, base of the white Lipizzaner horses since the 16th century, whose Baroque Winter Riding School is still used for performances. You then cross Heldenplatz, the vast Heroes' Square with its bronze equestrian statues of Prince Eugene of Savoy and Archduke Charles.

The tour ends in the Burggarten, once the emperor's private garden, now a public park with the Mozart monument and the glass Palm House. The best time to visit the Burggarten is from spring to autumn, when the lawns and flower beds are green; in winter the garden is bare, and from early November to late December the route may include a Christmas market instead.