Vienna’s Prater recreational area has a long record of entertaining all parts of society with both the bizarre and the banal. The Pratermuseum offers a quick insight into that history.
- Brief thematic overviews
- Diverse set of exhibits
- …from marriage machines to models
- All in English & German
- Run by the Wien Museum
- Take a historical walking tour* of Vienna
- See also:
The strange & wonderful
(Model of the 1873 World Fair held in the Prater; press photo: Klaus Pichler, Wien Museum)
Open to the public since 1766, the Prater seems to claim a special place in the hearts of the Viennese.
Unlike many of the city’s famous locations, this recreational park full of entertainments both natural and manufactured was a place where all could gather, wherever you stood on the social specturm.
The Prater also had (and still has) an other-worldliness to it.
Off to one side of the old town…a step apart from the norm and norms; a place full of the esoteric and exciting, the forbidden and the unusual. But also full of woodland and meadows.
One-time host to a world fair but also “the lion man”. Home to wildlife and walks, but also wild mechanical rides. Futuristic and also embedded in the past.
(Exterior view of the Pratermuseum and its famous neighbour; press photo © Herta Hurnaus)
A place of contrast and paradox, much like Vienna and the Viennese, perhaps. (Pass the vermouth, I feel a book coming on.)
All of which explains why the Prater featured so often on canvas and in print and film, some examples of which appear in the Pratermuseum run by the Wien Museum.
This small museum essentially gives you a quick flavour of the Prater’s history, its sociocultural highs, its unvarnished lows, and its various recreational uses. And all with a slight and loving bias in favour of the Victorianesque entertainments that enabled the earlier Viennese to forget the daily grind.
(Enjoy people spotting in the panorama picture; press photo: Klaus Pichler, Wien Museum)
It all begins in the steps leading up from the foyer, where you can lose a few minutes spotting personalities and events immortalised in the huge wall panorama of the Prater that fills the foyer.
The museum is quick to get around: two further floors explore such themes as theatrical entertainments and sports with the help of audiovisual material but mostly through illustrative exhibits.
Consider it all a dip into past times.
(Just a few coins and this 1897 machine will tell you the personality of your ideal spouse; press photo: Peter and Birgit Kainz, Wien Museum)
So you might peruse a 19th-century coffee house menu, where the cheapest lunchtime special cost 1 Gulden for soup, garnished beef, a roast with salad and a pastry (of course).
Or read ads for exotic animal shows.
Or view a model of that 1873 World Fair.
Or consider who might have put coins in the 1897 marriage brokerage machine that promised to reveal the characteristics of your ideal spouse. Hmmm, actually, I might have a bit of change in my pocket…
Tickets & visitor tips
At the time of writing, a standard adult entrance ticket cost €8. Anyone under 19 goes in for free.
Finding other things to do in the area is, obviously, easy since you’re surrounded by the huge Prater fun park. For example, Madame Tussauds is across the square. Not to mention the Riesenrad giant ferris wheel of Third Man fame.
(Pop out onto the Pratermuseum balcony on the upper level for raised views into the entertainment complex.)
The Wien Museum has many locations throughout Vienna. However, the apartment where Johann Strauss II lived with his family and wrote the Blue Danube waltz is within walking distance of the Pratermuseum.
And, should you wish to explore a wider history of Vienna, then make you way to the permanent exhibition of the Wien Museum on Karlsplatz.
How to get to the Pratermuseum
The museum is easy to find within the Prater complex.
First find your way to Praterstern station: the U1 and U2 subway lines that leave from, for example, Stephansplatz, Karlsplatz, Schottenring and Schwedenplatz in the centre stop here, as do tram lines 5 and O.
Follow the signs to leave the station and cross the road in the direction of the Riesenrad, which you can also easily spot once outside.
This takes you to the main entrance of the Prater entertainment complex: a small square to the left of the ferris wheel.
Next, go straight ahead either left or right around the dodgems to find the Pratermuseum just a few metres beyond (on your right if you went left and vice versa).
Address: Prater 92, 1020 Vienna | Website