Vienna

Under the Capuchin church, 150 Habsburgs laid out in coffins that run from plain to completely deranged, silver skulls and crowned skeletons cast straight into the metal. Reviewers keep saying how calm and quiet it is for somewhere so famous. English placards throughout. Their hearts and organs, by the way, are kept in two other churches across town.

• Quiet
• Adults only

A frenzied baroque monument boiling up in gold and marble clouds on the Graben, raised in thanks for the end of the 1679 plague. Free, outdoor, gloriously over the top, and planted on the busiest shopping street in the city. Best late, once the crowds thin out.

Best shot Floodlit and empty of shoppers after dark, all writhing gold clouds against a black sky.

• Touristy

Vienna’s Central Cemetery, larger than the whole inner city, with two and a half million graves, an art nouveau morgue-church at its heart, and presidents and composers under the trees. Endless, atmospheric, gloriously bleak. (Our addition, the cemetery your list was missing.)

Best shot The art nouveau morgue-church and the presidential tombs, avenues vanishing into the trees.

• Quiet
• Solo-friendly

Otto Wagner’s former villa, now a shrine to Ernst Fuchs and his fantastic-realism: lurid, ornate, erotic-macabre canvases in a jugendstil jewel box out west. Reviewers warn the art is "not suitable for everyone" and that midweek you get the place nearly to yourself. Both are selling points.

• Quiet
• Adults only

Empress Sisi’s "palace of dreams," a moody villa buried deep in a walled game reserve at the edge of the city, full of her private rooms and her famous obsession with her own image. Reviewers come for the quiet solitude and stay for the forest. A trek, and all the better for it.

• Quiet
• Solo-friendly

The Habsburg furniture depot: 61,000 pieces the dynasty left behind when the empire fell, from thrones to Sisi’s writing desk to the everyday clutter of 200 years of court. It rides the Sisi tourist pass but stays oddly quiet, and reviewers keep calling it an unexpected gem. The least macabre stop here, but a strange and lovely one.

• Quiet

A 19th-century church painted top to bottom in deep blue and gold, so dense it feels closer to a Byzantine dream than a Vienna parish. Quiet, free, well off the tourist track.

Best shot The blue-and-gold painted ceiling, shot straight up with a wide lens. Go when a service is not on.

• Quiet

A small, gold-drenched Greek Orthodox church on Fleischmarkt, all icons and dark glitter behind a Byzantine-revival front. Two minutes inside is worth it.

• Quiet

A vast neo-Renaissance courthouse built around a monumental staircase, with a stylish rooftop cafe most tourists never find. Free, but they let in only 25 people an hour and bags are a no, so travel light and go off-peak. Worth the security check for the grandeur and the view.

• Solo-friendly

The Holocaust memorial on Judenplatz, Rachel Whiteread’s blank concrete "nameless library," with the excavated foundations of a medieval synagogue below. A memorial to murdered people, so treat it as one.

• Quiet

The city’s Jewish museum, across two sites, telling a long and often dark history with care. Sober and essential, never a novelty.

• Quiet

The imperial art museum, and yes it is mobbed (go before the 10am opening, the line gets long). Walk past the Bruegels to the Kunstkammer: the Habsburgs’ cabinet of curiosities, room after room of bezoars, narwhal-horn goblets, automata and a golden salt cellar worth more than the building. The best hoard of beautiful weird objects in the city.

• Touristy

A Habsburg palace stuffed with old-master prints and Monets, the classic Vienna art stop, priced and crowded to match. Go for the opulent state rooms and Dürer’s melancholic engravings. Off-peak on a weekday you can walk straight in.

• Touristy

The Albertina’s contemporary wing, smaller and quieter, and worth it entirely for what is on the walls: it hosts the properly dark heavy-hitters, Damien Hirst, Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei. Check the current show first, because that is the whole experience.

• Quiet

A windowless black basalt monolith dropped into the MuseumsQuartier, eight floors of contemporary art that reviewers find either thrilling or empty. For us the draw is the building itself and the Vienna Actionism collection: Hermann Nitsch and the blood-and-ritual crowd. Divisive, dark, rarely crowded.

• Quiet
• Adults only

A sharp modern museum of Austrian history since 1918, set in the Neue Burg on the Heldenplatz, the balcony from which Hitler proclaimed the Anschluss in 1938. It does not look away from the dark century. About an hour, English throughout, and quiet.

• Quiet

A wild, statue-dotted park where the city runs out and the woods begin: roe deer, ponds, and, among the sculptures, the salvaged Attika figures from the Ringtheater, the opera house that burned in 1881 and killed hundreds. Peaceful and unmanicured, the anti-Schönbrunn.

• Quiet
• Solo-friendly

A dark-wood bohemian coffeehouse run by the same family since 1945, suited waiters, marble tables, and the sweet Buchteln rolls that come out warm in the evening. Beloved and historic, and thoroughly on the tourist trail now, but still worth a melange.

• Solo-friendly
• Touristy

A tiny cafe done up as a vintage train carriage and elevator, near-perfect ratings, cheap, and locally famous for its cakes. Cozy, characterful, and about as far from the tour-group coffeehouses as you can get.

• Quiet
• Solo-friendly

Adolf Loos’s 1908 cocktail box, a jewel of a room in marble, onyx and mirrors barely bigger than a train compartment. There is a dress code, the drinks are not cheap, and you should book, because everyone wants the same tiny table. Open till 4am.

• Adults only
• Touristy

The Blue Bar inside the Hotel Sacher, a hush of blue silk and low light for a pricey post-opera nightcap. Small, elegant, and, as reviewers note, far less mobbed than the tourist scrum at the Sacher café next door. Reservations help.

• Adults only
• Quiet

Regularly called the best bar in Vienna, a cozy, low-lit room where strong cocktails come to a soundtrack of vinyl and the menu itself is a record. Cash only, open till 2am. A perfect solo perch, not a party.

• Adults only
• Solo-friendly

A properly dark, poster-plastered coffeehouse pouring melange and ladling goulash until 1am. Low-lit and moody, and unlike the famous coffeehouses down the road it has no queue. The one to pick when you want the Vienna café gloom without the tour groups.

• Solo-friendly

A tiny, women-owned wine bistro where the owner walks you through a huge list and cooks Northern Greek dishes from family recipes. Warm, intimate, a genuine hidden gem for a slow evening.

• Adults only
• Solo-friendly

A serious natural-wine bistro with a real sommelier, a long list open by the glass, and a seasonal kitchen heavy on game and sourdough. A splurge, reservations essential, and the wine is the reason you came.

• Adults only

An avant-garde boutique hidden in a courtyard, all architectural black tailoring and conceptual designers. If your wardrobe is already mostly black, this is the mothership.

• Adults only
• Quiet

A tightly curated vintage store with a near-perfect rating, the kind of place you leave with one perfect coat and no regrets.

• Solo-friendly

A minimalist concept store stocking Japanese, Scandinavian and Austrian labels, heavy on structured black and clean lines.

• Solo-friendly

A nostalgic vintage store worth a rummage, though the reviews run hot and cold (3.6 stars), so go with patience and an open mind rather than a shopping list.

A small concept store with a wink of a name and a tight edit of design pieces. Barely reviewed, worth a look if you are already in the neighbourhood.

• Solo-friendly

The shop of the MAK, the applied-arts museum, a cut above the usual gift counter: design objects, jewellery and clever oddities worth taking home. Worth a look even if you skip the museum itself.

• Solo-friendly