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Eight unique Austrian museums you need to visit

Austria—especially Vienna—is world-renowned for its museums, each exploring thousands of years of art, history, culture, nature, or science.

Published: 28 March 2024 16:08 CET
Eight unique Austrian museums you need to visit
Burg Riergersburg, home of one of Austria's most colourful characters - 'Bad Lisl'. Photo: Leonhard Niederwimmer / Pixabay

However, where do you go after you’ve done the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Albertina, and the other ‘big names’? 

Here are eight wonderfully unique museums across Austria that are well worth visiting and offer a unique perspective on Austria and Austrians. 

Crime Museum, Vienna

Buried deep in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt, in one of its oldest houses, visitors can submerge themselves in centuries of the capital’s seedy underworld at the Vienna Crime Museum. 

Amidst printed murder ballads, weapons that took the lives of innocents and other rather gruesome displays, the story of how law and order developed within the Austrian capital is told – with a bit of dry caustic wit and humour. 

One particularly morbid highlight is the skeleton of Theresia Kandl, a 19th-century murderess who was the first woman to be hanged at the city’s gallows. 

Funeral Museum, Vienna

Spend any time in Vienna, and you’ll realise that death is a part of life. 

That’s not to say that it’s hazardous – just that the Viennese have a particular relevance and fondness for the business of death, including funerals.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that Vienna has a museum dedicated to funerary culture at the city’s central cemetery.

A lively, interactive series of displays informs the visitor about how funerals and mourning have evolved over the centuries. There are also loads of interesting headstones, mourning gowns, and other trinkets on display. 

The museum is also known for its gift shop, full of delightfully morbid gifts—a Playmobil funeral hearse and skeleton mourners, for example! 

Dom Museum, Salzburg

Tucked within the cathedral museum in Salzburg is the ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’, first established by Prince Bishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau and greatly expanded by one of his successors, Max Gandolf von Kuenburg, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

A collection of artworks and ‘oddities’ was essential to reputation building for Early Modern rulers, and the Prince Bishops of Salzburg were some of the most powerful around. Therefore, the treasures on display needed to be second to none. 

The collection includes the relics of various saints (sometimes multiples of the same body parts), beautifully preserved coral, automata, and other weird and wonderful things. 

Knappenwelt Gurgtal, Tarrenz, Tyrol

A lot of Tyrol and Austria’s wealth originated from beneath the ground. Evidence of mining occurring over three thousand years ago has been uncovered in some areas.

Knappenwelt Gurgtal is an open-air museum that aims to show how silver, zinc, and other metals were mined in the Middle Ages. 

That’s not the museum’s star attraction, however. That would be the ‘Healer of Gurgtal‘, found nearby in 2008. 

This is the grave of a woman around forty years old who showed evidence of being a ‘wise woman’ who supplied remedies and cures. 

She may have aided the miners before her death during the Thirty Years’ War.

Schloss Eggenberg, Graz, Styria

This one almost feels like cheating. Schloss Eggenberg is more than one museum—it’s three, at least. 

The castle has been preserved as a fantastic example of how Austrian nobility embraced growing scientific knowledge in the sixteenth century, embedding it into their homes’ very art and fabric. 

Nothing is by accident; everything is planned and usually has an astronomical significance. 

The castle also houses the art gallery and coin collections of the Universalmuseum Joanneum, Styria’s central museum authority.  

The state’s archaeological museum is constructed beneath the beautiful gardens. You can find several unique ancient treasures there, such as the ‘Cult Wagon of Strettweg’. 

Burg Riegersburg, Riegersburg, Styria

Another castle, the imposing Burg Riegenburg, was once home to one of the most colourful characters in Austria’s history: Katharina Elisabeth von Galler, or ‘Bad Lisl’. 

At a time when women were not permitted the same rights as men, the seventeenth-century noblewoman refused to submit. She married three times and proved a terror to her husbands if they so much as lifted a finger to prevent her from ruling in her own right. 

Today, the castle’s museum is divided into three sections. 

The first tells the story of the castle and its rulers over the centuries, while the second deals with Burg Riegersburg’s role in witch trials during the lifetime of ‘Bad Lisl’. 

The third section is devoted to a display of weaponry and armour that would humble some state museums. 

Archaeological Park Carnuntum, Bruck an der Leitha, Lower Austria

Once upon a time, Austria was an integral part of the Roman Empire, known as the province of Pannonia – and the capital wasn’t Vienna, but the thriving city of Carnuntum. 

Once home to 50,000 inhabitants, the city was destroyed in the fourth century, only to be really excavated in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

Now, a vivid picture of life is displayed in locations across Bruck an der Leitha, including a dedicated museum and recreations of several buildings found there. 

An innovative aspect of the experience is the ‘Carnuntium’ App, which allows users to see the ruins as they would have appeared at the city’s height. 

Tyrolean Folk Art Museum, Innsbruck, Tyrol

Austrian folklore is a wild mix of magic, nature, and Christian belief, expressed through traditional handicrafts, songs, and dance. 

These traditions are showcased in the Tyrolean Folk Art Museum in central Innsbruck, a Tyrolean State Museum collection. 

Don’t go in thinking you’ll just be looking at cosy domestic artefacts; you’re far more likely to encounter ghosts, goblins, witches, and saints doing extraordinary deeds. 

Definitely one to spend hours enjoying – especially the rather creepy masks and costumes used in traditional festivals!

Is there a museum we should add to the list? Let us know in the comments section below. 

Member comments

  1. The Josephinum Medical History Museum with its collection of 18th century wax anatomical models. Works of art in themselves. Unique experience.

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Will Austria’s Hallstatt restrict tourism this season?

One of Austria's most beautiful and crowded villages is looking for ways to curb overtourism. Here are the restrictions that could be coming - and those that won't be implemented - for those wanting to visit the Disney-like jewel.

Published: 8 May 2024 15:16 CEST
Will Austria's Hallstatt restrict tourism this season?

The photo went all over the world: a makeshift wall was erected in Hallstatt’s top “selfie” spot, a raised section of the main road where people would squish together for the perfect photo overlooking the quaint church by the lake. 

The residents of the small Salzburg town decided to strike back against overtourism in the region—a hotspot due to its charming vibes, which are said to have inspired the Disney movie Frozen. After a social media backlash, the village—which is also a UNESCO heritage site—removed the fence, but signs remind visitors to enjoy the site quietly.

Since then, some of Hallstatt’s 750 residents have protested in favour of tourism curbs in the village – which gets as many as 10,000 visitors a day in high season. 

The Italian solution

One of the possibilities floated in Austria was to adopt the “Venetian model”, with every visitor simply having to buy an entrance ticket. However, Mayor Alexander Scheutz (SPÖ) said he was against an entrance fee for the jewel of the Salzkammergut.

“Charging an admission fee would lead to guests taking away even more rights, which would create even more of a museum aura,” said Scheutz. “There are also complicated legal aspects: How are we supposed to charge a penalty fee for guests from all over the world if they don’t have a ticket? The effort would simply be too great.”

However, the region is still looking for ways to curb overtourism. Governor Thomas Stelzer (ÖVP) recently went to Venice with a delegation to exchange ideas on the topic with the President of the Regional Council of Veneto, Roberto Ciambetti. 

READ ALSO: Four of the best hidden villages in Austria’s Salzkammergut region

What is Hallstatt doing?

Even if entry fees are not planned, the village wants to “guide and regulate” visitors and create guidelines for when the area is “full” and no more tourists are allowed. 

A working group has been set up, and the first step will be to introduce precise measurements of visitor flows – something that had yet to be done until the local tourism association started carrying out counts at several checkpoints just last year. The results of these counts have yet to be made available.

One thing that is already in place is time slots for coaches. Hallstatt has strictly limited time slots for coaches that determine how long they and their passengers can stay. “This is already working very well. In terms of overnight stays and day visitors, we are back to pre-pandemic levels—however, the number of coaches per day has halved, and we have not yet reached the maximum of 54 coaches per day,” said Mayor Scheutz.

READ ALSO: 6 great alternatives to Austria’s overcrowded tourists hotspots

Still, he admitted, Hallstatt’s busiest times are the summer months and around Christmas, so things are about to pick up there. So far, there have been no particular restrictions or extra payments for tourists travelling without bus companies.

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