Schönbrunn sells more ticket types than any other sight in Vienna, and the names do not help. State Apartments, Palace Ticket, Classic Pass, Classic Pass Plus, Sisi Pass. The difference between them is not quality, it is scope: how many rooms, and how much of the garden estate.
Here is what each one actually opens. Prices below are the published adult rates at the time of writing, indicative only and subject to change.
The two palace tours
State Apartments, also called the Imperial Tour
Around €30 for adults, €20 for children aged 6 to 18. Roughly 40 minutes. This covers the ceremonial state rooms and a selection of rooms on the piano nobile: Franz Joseph’s spartan bedroom with its iron camp bed, Elisabeth’s dressing room, the Hall of Mirrors where a six-year-old Mozart played for Maria Theresa, and the Great Gallery with its ceiling frescoes and the chandeliers under which the Congress of Vienna danced in 1814.
It is a complete visit. Nothing about it feels like a trailer for something better.
Palace Ticket, also called the Grand Tour
Around €42 for adults, €30 for children. Roughly 75 minutes. Everything above, plus the rest of the piano nobile: Maria Theresa’s private chambers, the Vieux-Laque Room panelled in Chinese lacquer, the Millions Room with its Indo-Persian miniatures set into rosewood, the Blue Chinese Salon where Emperor Karl I renounced participation in affairs of state in November 1918.
The extra rooms are where the palace stops being an emperor’s office and starts being a family’s home. If you have any interest in the eighteenth century, this is the one. If the palace is a box you are ticking between other things, it is not.
The passes
Classic Pass
Around €49 for adults, €36 for children. The Grand Tour plus four garden attractions: the Privy Garden, the Orangery Garden, the Maze and Labyrinth, and the viewing terrace at the top of the Gloriette. Schönbrunn puts the saving at about 20 per cent against buying separately, and allow three to four hours.
Two things to know before you buy it. First, the garden attractions are seasonal. They open roughly from late March to the start of November, with hours around 9.30am to 5.30pm, extended to 6.30pm in July and August. Outside that window the pass loses most of its value. Second, the parkland itself, the hill, the Neptune Fountain, the avenues, the walk up to the Gloriette and the view from outside it, is free and open from 6.30 in the morning. You pay only for the terrace on the Gloriette’s roof, the Privy and Orangery gardens, and the maze.
If it is April to October and you have a whole afternoon, the Classic Pass is the best-value ticket Schönbrunn sells. If you are there in January, buy the palace tour and walk the free gardens.
Classic Pass Plus
Around €81 for adults, €58 for children, valid over one or two days. Everything in the Classic Pass plus Tiergarten Schönbrunn, the Desert Experience House and the Palm House. The zoo opened in 1752 and is the oldest still operating anywhere in the world, and it is genuinely good: giant pandas, elephants, an aquarium, more than 700 species.
This is a family ticket in all but name. Two adults and children, one long day or two half-days, and it earns its price. Two adults on a city break who will spend forty minutes at the zoo out of curiosity will not get their money back.
Sisi Pass
Around €60 for adults, €38 for children, and valid for a full year from issue. It combines Schönbrunn with the Sisi Museum and Imperial Apartments at the Hofburg in the city centre, and the Vienna Furniture Museum in the seventh district.
This is the one people misunderstand. It is not a better Schönbrunn ticket. It is a Habsburg ticket that happens to include Schönbrunn, and it only makes sense if you intend to visit all three sites. The Hofburg apartments and the Sisi Museum tell the other half of Elisabeth’s story: the gymnastic rings in her dressing room, the obsessive hairdressing, the death mask. If that story interests you, the pass is good value and the year of validity is unusually generous. If you were never going to cross the city for the Furniture Museum, it is not.
So which one
- Half a day, general interest: State Apartments, then walk the free gardens.
- Half a day, real interest in the Habsburgs: Grand Tour.
- A full afternoon between April and October: Classic Pass.
- Travelling with children: Classic Pass Plus, and give the zoo three hours.
- Following Sisi across Vienna: Sisi Pass.
Two practical notes
The palace opens at 8.30 daily and closes between 5pm and 6pm depending on the season, with last admission 45 minutes before closing. Entry is timed for every ticket type, so the slot on your ticket is the slot you enter, and arriving three hours later does not work.
Getting there: U4 to Schönbrunn, then five to seven minutes on foot. Trams 10 and 60 and bus 10A stop outside the main gates. For the zoo and the Palm House, stay on to Hietzing instead. Full opening times, room counts and what to see are on our Schönbrunn Palace page.
Pairing Schönbrunn with the city’s art? The Kunsthistorisches Museum holds the Habsburg picture collection that these same emperors assembled, and the Belvedere is the Baroque palace they were competing with. Any of them can be booked for a set time when you have decided which morning is which.
