7 Best Places to Visit in Austria

Austria packs a surprising range of experiences into a small footprint — an imperial capital, Alpine ski towns, and a UNESCO-listed lakeside village are all within a few hours of each other by train. Here are seven places worth building a trip around, and how to stay connected while you visit them.

1. Vienna

Austria's capital was the seat of the Habsburg monarchy for centuries, and it still looks the part — grand boulevards, the Vienna State Opera, and Schönbrunn Palace, the former imperial summer residence with its formal gardens. It's also a genuine music capital: Mozart, Beethoven, and Johann Strauss all lived and worked here, and classical concerts run nightly across the city.

2. Salzburg

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthplace sits at the foot of the Alps, its baroque old town listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The hilltop Hohensalzburg Fortress overlooks the city, and the surrounding countryside is instantly recognizable from "The Sound of Music," filmed largely in and around Salzburg.

3. Hallstatt

This lakeside village in the Salzkammergut region is one of the most photographed spots in Austria — pastel houses stacked against the mountainside above the Hallstätter See. It's also genuinely historic: nearby salt mines have been worked for thousands of years, among the oldest in the world, and the wider region is a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape.

4. Innsbruck

The capital of Tyrol sits directly in the Alps, close enough that a cable car runs from the city center into the mountains. Innsbruck hosted the Winter Olympics twice, in 1964 and 1976, and its old town is anchored by the Golden Roof, a 16th-century balcony covered in gilded copper tiles.

5. Graz

Austria's second-largest city pairs a UNESCO-listed historic center with a genuinely modern landmark: the Kunsthaus Graz, a biomorphic glass-and-steel building locals nicknamed the "Friendly Alien." The old town's narrow streets and courtyards reward slow wandering, and it makes a cheaper, quieter alternative to Vienna for a city stop.

6. Kitzbühel

One of the best-known ski towns in the Alps, Kitzbühel hosts the Hahnenkamm downhill race each January — widely considered one of the most demanding races on the World Cup alpine skiing circuit. Outside ski season, the same slopes turn into hiking and mountain-biking terrain, and the medieval town center stays worth a stop year-round.

7. Wachau Valley

This stretch of the Danube between Melk and Krems is lined with vineyards, terraced hillsides, and medieval towns — a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape. Melk Abbey, a working Benedictine monastery with an enormous baroque library, sits at one end; the fortified town of Dürnstein, where Richard the Lionheart was once held prisoner, sits partway along.

Staying connected while you travel

Austria has strong 4G/5G coverage across its cities and most Alpine tourist areas, though signal can thin out in remote valleys and higher trails — setting up an eSIM before you land means you're online the moment you arrive, without hunting for a SIM kiosk or relying on hotel Wi-Fi.

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Read more in our beginner's guide to how eSIMs work, or browse current Austria eSIM plans to compare providers before you go.