The courtyard loungers
Vienna's best-known free place to sit — a social rather than touristic experience, which is exactly why to come.
Kasa Fue — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ralf Roletschek — CC BY 3.0 · CAPTAIN RAJU — CC BY-SA 4.0 · CAPTAIN RAJU — CC BY-SA 4.0
These were baroque imperial stables with room for thousands of horses, converted in 2001 into one of the world's largest cultural complexes: modern buildings in white and black stone planted inside the old wings without hiding them. What matters most to a visitor is that the complex itself is free and open to everyone. Its broad inner courtyard is furnished with big coloured plastic loungers — repainted each season — where students, families and travellers sit for hours without anyone asking them to buy something. In summer it fills until late; in winter it turns into a small festive market. Around the courtyard sit the museums: the Leopold for modern Austrian art and Schiele, mumok for contemporary work in a dark stone block, a children's museum, small exhibition halls and cafés. You pick what interests you — or pick nothing and just sit, which is equally accepted here.
Vienna's best-known free place to sit — a social rather than touristic experience, which is exactly why to come.
Contemporary buildings set inside eighteenth-century stables with no attempt to hide either — an architectural lesson in itself.
The Leopold for Austrian art, mumok for contemporary, a museum for children — every member of a family can pick their own.
Museumsplatz, Vienna
Kunsthalle WienA contemporary art institution inside Vienna's MuseumsQuartier complex, and a Ku1 minute walk4.3
Leopold MuseumA collection built over half a century by a Viennese eye doctor, Rudolf Leopold,1 minute walk4.8
MQ LibelleA viewing platform on the roof of the Leopold Museum in Vienna's MuseumsQuartier1 minute walk4.5
MumokThe dark stone block in the middle of the MuseumsQuartier: the Museum of Modern 1 minute walk3.9
Maria-Theresien-PlatzThe square between the twin museums, with a vast seated statue of Empress Maria 2 minutes walk4.8The Leopold: it holds the world's largest Egon Schiele collection plus Klimt, and gives the fullest picture of Vienna around 1900.
Yes: the courtyard is safe, open and roomy, and the ZOOM children's museum is built for young ages around hands-on play rather than looking.