As you stumble out of the Staatsoper, emotionally exhausted by that final aria, you might like to find your hotel within walking distance. So here a few suggestions.
- See also:
- Accommodation in Vienna (useful articles)
- Best central hotels
At the time of writing, reviewers gave the following locations a rating of at least 8 at booking.com. All are within a very easy walk of the state opera house; most are literally just over the road.
After the hotel recommendations, find a few helpful tips for enjoying the opera and locality, advice on how to reach the area, and some more options for places to stay on a map that also covers apartments.
In no particular order…
Hotel Bristol
An official five-star location right opposite the opera house (you can book rooms with a direct view of the Staatsoper).
The hotel has a fair few connections to the operatic and classical music world, given the likes of Puccini, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Mahler, Caruso, and Richard Strauss all stayed within its walls. .
Hotel Bristol first opened at the end of the 19th century. The current look dates back to the early 1910s: the external railings and style hint at the rise of modernist tendencies in the architecture of the time.
Living Hotel an der Oper
Offering rooms and serviced apartments further up Kärntner Straße (the street that passes by the opera house). It has an entrance to Karlsplatz subway station practically outside for easy access to Vienna’s excellent public transport system.
Go around the other side of the block to find Café Museum: one of Vienna’s renowned coffee houses and a former haunt of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.
Hotel Sacher
Sitting on the opposite side of the road from the rear of the Staatsoper, this famous traditional Viennese hotel is a one-time star of The Third Man and also home to the iconic Sachertorte cake.
I’ve visited one of their suites. Put it this way: you don’t need to worry about quality. (The local chamber of commerce grades it as five-star superior.)
If you stay at the hotel, you really ought to have coffee and cake inside (or reserve a table for the Café Sacher – queues to get in are common and often quite long).
Le Meridien Vienna
If you walk from the hotel in the opposite direction to the Staatsoper, another operatic icon appears in the form of the Mozart monument in the Burggarten Park.
The Burg Kino almost next door to Le Meridien is one of Vienna’s English-language cinemas and probably best known for regular showings of The Third Man.
For another cultural highlight, walk across the adjoining park and past the Schiller monument to visit the Gemäldegalerie of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. This “paintings gallery” holds such treasures as Hieronymus Bosch’s The Last Judgment.
Austria Trend Hotel Astoria Wien
Just behind Hotel Sacher in the direction of Vienna’s old town along the pedestrianised Kärntner Straße. The rather historic location used to be part of a 14th-century convent, though the current rooms represent a significant upgrade on the nun’s former accommodation.
Keep going along Kärntner Straße to reach Stephansplatz square and the heart of the city.
Das Opernring Hotel
A smaller location that still retains some of the Art Deco elements characteristic of the original building. Just up from the hotel is a Café Aida, one of Vienna’s local patisserie chains, with famous pink branding and a name rather suitable for opera goers.
Other hotels and apartments
For more suggestions, try the map below…Vienna’s not short of decent places to stay:
(Map provided by booking.com*, who I am an affiliate of)
(The State Opera House is marked at the centre of the map)
The local area
Surprisingly, given the topic of this article, you should find yourself close to…
The Staatsoper
(The Staatsoper at night)
Your hotel may have its own sources and suggestions for tickets, but the opera house itself will happily sell you one direct. Immediate sales are normally possible online from two months in advance of a performance. Otherwise, you put in a prebooking request for dates that are further away.
I have some advice on getting hold of inexpensive tickets here. Another way to experience the building is through an in-house tour, which shows you places you won’t see when you attend a performance. The live guide also has plenty of intriguing stories and anecdotes.
(My suggested self-guided walking tour of Vienna also starts at the Staatsoper.)
Nearby
(The Musikverein with Karlskirche behind it)
A hotel near the opera house puts you at the edge of the old town and within a short walk of Stephansdom cathedral, the pedestrianised centre (with its broad historical streets and architectural delights), and Karlsplatz square with the Karlskirche church.
The opera also backs onto the Albertina art museum, home to permanent and temporary exhibitions as well as palais staterooms.
Among the traditional cafés and coffee houses nearby are Café Sacher (mentioned above) and Café Mozart.
Also consider popping down Kärntner Straße to Sluka, which has a quite wonderful Jugendstil interior to go with your cake and coffee. One of my favourites.
Two nearby alternatives for extending your musical experience are:
- House of Music: a museum of sound which also has rooms dedicated to composers claimed by the Viennese as one of their own, like Beethoven, Mozart and Mahler.
- The Musikverein: as mentioned earlier, a short walk from one of the world’s greatest opera houses is one of the world’s greatest classical concert venues, which the Wiener Philharmoniker call home.
How to get there
Vienna is a compact city with an excellent public transport system. The Staatsoper sits next to one of the major transport hubs: Karlsplatz station has the U1, U2, and U4 subway lines, and trams 1, 2, D, 62, and 71 all stop at the Oper/Karlsplatz tram stop.
Clearly, you can get to and from the opera house very easily (and not forgetting taxis).
So if you wish to stay in a hotel elsewhere in Vienna, it’s not a problem getting to the evening performance and back again. For example, I live in an outer district and have a direct tram line that takes me door-to-door to the Staatsoper in about 25 minutes.