What to see in Vienna in 3 days: day-by-day itinerary

Drop those bags and start living like a local: once you are inside the Ring, your whole first evening is on foot, and the walk from your hotel door to the cathedral takes minutes rather than a metro ride. Viennese hotels are relaxed about early luggage drop-off, so even if your room is not ready, leave the cases at reception, splash some water on your face and get out while the light is still good - late May daylight lasts long enough that a late-afternoon arrival still buys you a proper first impression. Use the first half hour to fix the geography of your three days: stand at your hotel door and work out which way is Stephansplatz, which way is the Hofburg, and where the nearest U-Bahn entrance is. That small ritual pays off for the rest of the trip, because every plan that follows assumes you can find the Graben without a map. Then unpack only what you need - comfortable shoes, a layer, a rain shell - and leave the rest for later.

St. Stephen's - 'Steffl' to every Viennese - is the right place to begin, because almost everything else you will see over the next three days grew out of it. A church has stood on this spot since the 12th century, but the building you walk into became a collegiate church in 1365, when Rudolf IV moved the collegiate foundation he had created seven years earlier in the Hofburg's All Saints' Chapel into St. Stephen's and gave its provost the title Arch-Chancellor of Austria. By 1469 and 1479 it was a bishop's seat with a cathedral chapter, and by 1723 the metropolitan church of the Archbishop of Vienna - which is why the cathedral and the palace you will tour tomorrow feel like two halves of a single imperial story. Look up before you go in. The south tower is such an accomplished piece of architecture that in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire no church was permitted to rise higher; Linz's cathedral was deliberately finished two metres lower. The engineering is almost as surprising as the height - the foundation beneath that tower is less than four metres deep - and the roof carries the story in coloured tiles: the double eagle of the Austrian Empire with the monogram of Emperor Franz I, and after the roof burned at the end of the Second World War, the Austrian federal eagle and the Vienna coat of arms laid into the north side in the same technique. Inside, look back at the Romanesque Riesentor you came in by, find the Wiener Neustädter Altar, and then simply sit in a pew until your eyes adjust to the gloom; this is the moment the trip tips from sightseeing into travelling. When you are ready for air again, climb the south tower for the view over the tiled roof and the Innere Stadt, or take the lift up the north tower to stand beside the great Pummerin bell.

Vienna's most elegant shopfront promenade is also its best free show, and this is the hour to walk it. The Graben's baroque plague column - the Pestsäule, raised in thanksgiving after the plague of 1679 - turns honey-coloured in late light, the windows glitter, and the crowd thins as the offices empty. Follow the Graben west into the Kohlmarkt, the 'cabbage market' that grew into the imperial court's luxury address, and you arrive at Michaelerplatz, where the great curved Michaelertor announces the Hofburg you will explore tomorrow and the copper-green dome of the Michaelerkirche anchors the square's oldest corner. Treat this walk as an orientation lesson as much as a stroll. From here the Graben runs east back to Stephansplatz, the Hofburg sits on your left, the Ringstrasse loops behind you, and the Kärntner Straße drops down towards the State Opera. Learn that triangle on your first evening and you will barely need a map again. If your arrival ran late and you only manage half of this, no harm: everything here is two minutes from tomorrow's route, so you can fold it into the morning before the Hofburg.

The Hofburg was not designed as a palace so much as accumulated as one: it grew, wing by imperial wing, for more than six hundred years, and that is exactly what makes walking through it so satisfying. Enter from Michaelerplatz beneath the curving neo-baroque gate and you are inside the complex that served as the Habsburgs' winter residence - the imperial apartments where Franz Joseph worked at his desk into the last years of his life, the Sisi Museum that unpicks how Elisabeth of Bavaria became the melancholy icon of a dynasty, and the Silver Collection, an entire floor of imperial tableware that tells you more about how the court ate than any menu could. The detail worth pausing on is older than all of it. The All Saints' Chapel inside this complex is where Rudolf IV founded a collegiate foundation in 1358, seven years before he moved it to St. Stephen's - the thread that ties last night's cathedral to today's palace. Keep an eye, too, for the Winter Riding School: this is where the Lipizzaner stallions of the Spanish Riding School still work, and morning exercise sessions are the traditional way to watch them without buying a gala performance ticket. Because the Hofburg is a maze of courtyards and wings, resist the urge to see all of it. The Sisi Museum, Imperial Apartments and Silver Collection share one ticket and take roughly two hours at a moderate pace - precisely the rhythm this trip is built for. Finish in the inner courtyards, where the noise of the city simply stops.

Two modest churches stand within a few minutes of the Hofburg, and for anyone who loves churches as much as palaces they are the quiet heart of this day. The Augustinerkirche, tucked into the palace complex on Augustinerstraße, was the Habsburgs' court parish church: Franz Joseph and Elisabeth were married here in 1854, and in the Loreto chapel the silver urns of the Herzgruft hold the embalmed hearts of the dynasty. The bodies went to the Kapuzinergruft, the hearts stayed with the Augustinians, the viscera went to the cathedral - a Habsburg habit of dividing the dead that no other royal house took quite so far. The Michaelerkirche on Michaelerplatz is older and stranger: a church with Romanesque bones and a baroque face, whose crypt beneath the nave preserved its burials so dryly that the bodies were long displayed to visitors. Step in for ten minutes, let your eyes adjust to the half-dark, and listen to how completely the traffic and tour groups of Michaelerplatz vanish behind the door. Both churches sit directly on the walk between the Hofburg's exit and lunch, so this costs you no travel time at all - the best kind of detour.

The Ringstrasse is Vienna's great nineteenth-century statement: a broad boulevard laid over the line of the old city walls, lined with the institutions of a confident empire. Walk it westwards from the State Opera and you pass in sequence the Burggarten with its Mozart monument, the Neue Burg wing of the Hofburg closing Maria-Theresien-Platz, the twin Kunsthistorisches and Naturhistorisches museums facing each other across the square, Parliament with its Athena fountain, the neo-Gothic Rathaus and its park, the Burgtheater, the university, the Börse, and finally the Stadtpark, where a gilded Johann Strauss fiddles above the flowerbeds. You can also ride parts of it. The old yellow sightseeing tram no longer runs, but the ordinary city trams on lines 1, 2, D and 71 each cover stretches of the Ring on a standard public-transport ticket; none completes the full circle, so you would switch lines to see everything. The sweet combination is the west half on foot - Opera to Parliament to Rathaus - and a tram for the stretch past the university and the Stadtpark when your legs have had enough. By the time you finish at Stadtpark you are ten minutes from dinner on the Wollzeile, and the Ring at dusk, with the facades lit, is a different city altogether. Save twenty minutes for the walk back along it after dark.

This is the night your classical-music interest earns its reward. The Musikverein opened in 1870 as the home of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and remains the house of the Vienna Philharmonic - one of the reasons Vienna can make a fair claim to being the world capital of classical music. Its Golden Hall is a gilded, caryatid-hung box with famously warm acoustics, and even a modest programme there feels like an event. Arrive twenty minutes early, walk the foyer, find your seats, and note that Viennese audiences are relaxed about dress: smart casual is entirely sufficient. Programmes change with the season, so pick your night by checking the Musikverein and Vienna State Opera calendars as soon as the season is published, and book early - the most in-demand concerts vanish quickly. If you want the connoisseur's budget route, standing-room places at the State Opera, a few minutes down the Ring, are the classic mid-range way to see a great house. Whichever house you choose, end the evening on your feet: the short walk back past the floodlit Opera and down the Ring gives you the boulevard you walked this afternoon at its most theatrical, and a last melange or a glass of wine near Karlsplatz is a fine way to let the evening settle.

Start early - this is your last day and the one must-see that sits outside the Ring, so arriving before the tour buses is worth the alarm. Schönbrunn is a UNESCO World Heritage Site celebrated as much for its Baroque landscaping as for the building itself: the Great Parterre, the Neptune Fountain, the faux-Roman ruins, the palm house and the Gloriette on the hill above were designed to be read from the palace windows as a single, perfectly ordered picture. Inside, the state rooms carry the family's whole story. Maria Theresa held court here for decades, reorganising an empire from a summer palace; a six-year-old Mozart performed in the Mirror Room and, by the famous telling, promptly proposed to one of the archduchesses; Napoleon occupied the palace twice; and Emperor Franz Joseph - the man from yesterday's Hofburg tour - was both born and died in these rooms. Ask about his spartan study and about Elisabeth's exercise equipment; the contrast with the ceremonial apartments is the human detail that makes the ticket worth it. Leave real time for the gardens afterwards. The Gloriette's terrace has the finest view back over the palace and the city, and the gradual walk up through the grounds is the perfect unhurried final hour in Vienna. One note for later: the Orangery in the grounds is where the Schönbrunn Palace Concerts play Strauss and Mozart in the evening - if you ever come back, that is the night to book.

Head back towards your hotel through the Innere Stadt - from the Graben down to Stephansplatz if you have the minutes - and stop in front of the cathedral one last time. If the light is doing something good on those coloured roof tiles, this is the photograph you will keep. Collect your bags, empty the room safe, and give the room one slow sweep before you hand back the key. This is also the moment to ask the front desk for their read on getting to your station or the airport, because they know the day's traffic news better than any app, and staffed reception beats guesswork when you are on a schedule. If your departure is later than you would like, most central hotels will hold luggage for a few hours after check-out so you can shop the Graben or sit out one more coffee unencumbered.