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Travel and Tourism in Austria
Travel alerts, currency, climate, transit, health, and safety information for visitors to Austria.
Practical Information
Travel alert status, currency, climate, and transit details.
- Travel Alert Status
- Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions
- Time Difference
- UTC+1 (6 hours ahead of Washington, DC, during Standard Time)
- Currency
- 0.9214
- Climate
- Temperature extremes in Vienna vary between summer highs of 95°F and - 4°F in winter. October may be damp and rainy, and light snowfalls occur in November and December. Snow, sometimes heavy, and frost can occur from January until mid-March. April, May, and early June offer pleasant spring weather, and summers are often delightful. Vienna sometimes becomes uncomfortably hot in July and August, especially in the city's center, but the suburbs, particularly those which are elevated, are pleasant. The city is subject to rapid and marked changes in atmospheric pressures with accompanying winds. One such wind, the foehn, carries warm air from the south. It has a special meaning for the Viennese since many people blame it for peculiar human behavior. The average annual precipitation in Vienna is 21.02 inches. The mountainous regions have long, cold winters with heavy snowfall and bright, crisp days. The Danube Basin usually has less snow, is damper, and therefore has more gray and overcast days than the higher altitudes.
- Language(s) Spoken
- German (official nationwide) 88.6%, Turkish 2.3%, Serbian 2.2%, Croatian (official in Burgenland) 1.6%, other (includes Slovene, official in southern Carinthia, and Hungarian, official in Burgenland) 5.3%
- Ethnic Groups
- Austrian 80.8%, German 2.6%, Bosnian and Herzegovinian 1.9%, Turkish 1.8%, Serbian 1.6%, Romanian 1.3%, other 10%
- National Holiday
- National Day (commemorates passage of the law on permanent neutrality), 26 October (1955)
- Geographic Coordinates
- 47 20 N, 13 20 E
- Location
- Central Europe, north of Italy and Slovenia
- Airports
- 55
Destinations
Regions and cities, top sights, national parks, UNESCO sites, and festivals for visitors.
Vienna in Depth: The Imperial Capital and the World's Most Livable City
Vienna has been ranked the most livable city in the world more often than any other city on earth, a designation earned through a combination of extraordinary public transportation, low crime rates, excellent healthcare and education, remarkable cultural institutions, green public spaces of unusual quality and accessibility, and an urban quality of life that combines the grandeur of a great imperial capital with the intimacy and functionality of a well-managed modern city. Walking through Vienna, one is constantly struck by the ease with which the extraordinarily grand and the intimately human coexist. The Ringstrasse, that boulevard of imperial ambition, is also a place where Viennese dog walkers stroll in the morning and children cycle in the afternoon. The coffee houses where Mozart's contemporaries and Freud's patients sat are still open and still serving their marble-table contemplative function to the working Viennese.
The Ringstrasse itself deserves extended attention as a single coherent work of urban planning of astonishing ambition. Emperor Franz Joseph ordered the demolition of Vienna's medieval fortifications in 1857 and their replacement with a broad ring boulevard lined with public buildings of cultural and civic significance.
Health and Safety
Medical facilities, vaccinations, disease risk, and sanitation conditions.
There are an adequate number of hospitals available in Austria. Local hospitals will not settle their accounts directly with American insurance companies. You must pay the bill to the local hospital and later claim a refund from the insurance carrier in the United States. Medicare payments are not available outside the United States.