TOURS IN ENGLISH
If there is a certain topic, site or historical period you are especially interested in, I can organize a unique tour tailored to your special interests. Bellow are a few tour suggestions:
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My tours
Special Tours
Excursions
This pleasant walk in the heart of historical Vienna is ideal either to introduce newcomers or to refresh your memory of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. See the major sites (St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the pedestrian malls, the Hofburg Palace, the State Opera House and the Ringstrasse) and get a feeling for flavor of the city. This tour is also helpful to give you further ideas on what else to do and see.
By vehicle this tour can be extended to include the Belvedere Palace and the gardens, the Hundertwasser Haus, the Giant Ferris Wheel and the Danube River.
The Habsburgs knew how to skillfully to stage themselves, to keep a huge entourage of personnel and to live strictly according to the Spanish court ceremonial until 1918. This can be experienced in two forms: as a stroll through the Hofburg Palace, visiting the State Hall of the National Library, the Treasury and the Silver Collection or as a visit to Schönbrunn Palace with its gardens including the Carriage Museum.
Among over 90 museums in Vienna are unique collections of art such as the Fine Arts Museum, the Austrian Gallery at the Belvedere, Klimt's Beethoven Frieze in the Secession, the Albertina, the Leopold Museum and the Liechtenstein Museum.
Discover these and others with me as your guide.
Many members of the Habsburg family played music and composed themselves. The general love of this family for music made Vienna a city of music, where the nobility and bourgeoisie also promoted music and its masters. Discover the story of Antonio Vivaldi, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Antonio Salieri, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and many others in Vienna.
The tour can be extended from a simple walking tour to include any of the following buildings and museums: the State Opera House, the House of Music, the Mozart House, the Pasqualati House, the Collection of Old Music Instruments or the Central Cemetery and St. Marx Cemetery.
Napoleon Bonaparte successfully captured Vienna twice and each time he chose Schönbrunn Palace as his residence. He also left traces in today’s center of town. The tour will follow these and give you an insight into the people, life and politics in French-occupied Vienna.
Find out if Napoleonic law was ever established in Austrian law and if Napoleon ever met his future wife, the Archduchess Marie Louise, during his stay here.
In this era Emperor Franz Joseph built today’s major sites along the Ringstrasse. The new nobility bought land from the Emperor and erected their palaces along Vienna’s most beautiful boulevard. At the same time masses of people flowed into the city in the hope of employment. It was a time of upheaval and innovations, like the first cars driving on the Ringstrasse. Fashionable women tried to emulate Empress Sissi´s tiny waist and wore bird nests or flower bouquets as hats.
Vienna was able to produce great and strong women almost every century. Whether it was a fruitful childbearing sovereign, a women's rights activist, a doctor, a cigar- smoking hotel owner, a peace activist or the world's first “Hungerkünstlerin” a professional faster - Vienna had them all.
Find out more about these and other special women.
Many Hollywood personalities had their origins here or used Vienna as a stepping stone for their career. Some of them are known under the names of Max Steiner, Leon Askin, Billy Wilder or Hedy Lamarr. Early 20th century Vienna even made an attempt to compete with Hollywood.
Did you know that movies like “Casablanca” or James Bond’s “License to Kill” have Viennese connections?
The Ottoman Empire failed in two attempts to capture Vienna. The tour will follow remaining traces of these two sieges, Islamic personalities and the history of Islam up to present-day Vienna.
Legends related to time will also be subjects of the tour, such as Kolschitzky, coffee, and the invention of the croissant...
Facets of „Jewish Vienna" are presented here. So much seen as so typically "Viennese" would not have arisen without the Jewish influence such as Schönbrunn, the Blue Danube Waltz, coffee house literature, the Ferris wheel, psychoanalysis. On the other hand there are also things which are not so typically considered as "Viennese" such as Zionism or Mozart's Magic Flute.
There is more to Medical Vienna than the birth of Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis. The evidence of past great medical achievements and failures can be found everywhere in the city. Sites, personalities and innovations have left their mark. The discovery of the classic blood groups is just one of them…
Not only did some members of the Habsburgs provide Vienna with scandals and sensations, it sufficed here to build the Looshaus. Enjoy with me the "yellow press" of bygone days and the find out about the Viennese favorite pastimes.
Historicism and Art Nouveau were competing forms of art in Vienna. It was Emperor Franz Josephs taste against modernism of mainly young rebel artists, few bourgeois and the Jewish nouveau riche. The focus of this tour is on Otto Wagner’s subway stations, the Postsparkasse, and other Jugendstil buildings in downtown Vienna.
The Vienna Woods, with its thousand-year history is now a Biosphere park. Possible visits: Europe's largest underground lake, the Seegrotte; the oldest continuously existing Cistercian abbey in the world and the recording place (music chart winner), of the "Chant" CD, Stift Heiligenkreuz; Mayerling where the hopes of an entire Empire was destroyed, and Baden, as the former summer residence of the Viennese court and spa town.
The Augustinian canons monastery exists since 1133 and was built on Roman ruins, is unique with its medieval treasures including the Verdun Altar. These walls have seen dukes, archdukes, an Austrian Emperor as well as a French Emperor reside or visit. Join me there.
Additionally you can taste wines of the monastery, which is considered to be Austria’s largest and oldest winery.
The eastern Alps end with the „Hausberge der Wiener“, the so called house mountains of the Viennese, the Semmering, Rax and Schneeberg. See spectacular alpine landscapes, 19th century villas, and Europe’s first standard mountain railway, the Semmeringbahn (since 1998 UNESCO World Heritage Site). Learn about alpine culture and wildlife.
The tour can be combined to include hiking and lunch.