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Planning & Practicalities
Opening hours, public holidays, the Sunday closing rules and the rhythm of the Viennese year. This is the section that stops a trip or a week going wrong, and it is consistently the most useful thing we publish.
This is the section that stops a week going wrong. Vienna runs on published rules, and most of the friction visitors and new residents hit comes from not knowing three of them.
Sundays. Austria's Öffnungszeitengesetz keeps shops closed on Sundays and public holidays. On weekdays they may open 06:00–21:00 and Saturdays 06:00–18:00, with a 72-hour weekly maximum — and most close well before the law requires. The exemptions matter more than the rule: shops in railway stations and at the airport may trade on a Sunday, which is where the city buys milk. The full rules and exceptions.
Public holidays. Austria observes a longer list than most English-speaking countries, several of them Catholic feast days that fall on weekdays and close everything a Sunday would.
The shape of the year. Vienna in August is quieter than the guidebooks suggest — a substantial number of restaurants and small businesses close for weeks. From mid-November the Christmas markets change the centre entirely, and from January the city is cheap, cold and largely yours.
Articles here are about timing rather than taste: what is open, what is shut, and which day to do a thing on. It is consistently the most useful category we publish, which is why it is weighted heavily in what comes next.
No articles are published in this section yet. We publish two a week rather than filling a section in a day.
Queued for this section
- Why is so much of Vienna closed on a Sunday?
- What are typical shop opening hours in Vienna?
- What are Austria's public holidays, and what actually shuts in Vienna?
- What happens to Vienna in August?
- What are Austria's rules on shop closing hours?
- What changes in Vienna during Fasching?