Plenty of places in Vienna let you sip a coffee with a slice of cake while you watch the world go past. The Donauturm does too, though life goes past far below, not outside.
- Extensive views of the city & surrounds
- Viewing platform at >150m
- Revolving tower restaurant & café
- External slide for that extra kick
- A stop on the Hop on Hop off tours
- Book tower tickets* in advance
- See also:
The Danube Tower
(The Donauturm seen from afar)
Coffee with a view is a remarkably accurate description of the Donauturm. Austria’s tallest building looks out across Vienna and the Danube river.
Once inside the tower, express lifts take you up over 150m to the split-level viewing platform. This offers a 360° view across the entire city and beyond, with both open-air and weather-safe viewing options.
From here, you can see, for example:
- The United Nations complex
- The Danube (hard to miss, it being long, wide, watery, and river-shaped)
- The wind farms beyond the city limits
- Various landmark buildings, including:
- Stephansdom cathedral
- The Votivkirche church
- The Giant Ferris Wheel (not quite so “giant” from up here)
- The Prater fair complex
- The Spittelau incinerator with its remarkable design
- The Steinhof church, which glints gold among the distance hills to the west
- My apartment building (probably not on your must-see list)
Interactive multilingual touchscreens let you zoom in and learn more about individual buildings and what it is you’re actually looking at.
(It’s a long way to the top…if you wanna rock’n’roll)
Try the slide?
The Donauturm also has a 40m-long slide that drops you 15m from around 165m down to the viewing platform. But… (and it’s a mighty large but) …not just any slide.
Designed by renowned artist Carsten Höller, this slide curves its way around the *outside* of the tower.
As you can imagine, installing it that high up proved a significant project. Oh, and the upper half is transparent, just to add to the fun.
At the time of writing, you pay an extra €5 to use the slide.
Food and drink
A café sits above that viewing platform with a restaurant even higher up (170m). Both venues revolve, taking around 24 minutes to do a full turn: just about long enough for a cappuccino with a view.
The entire façade moves, which means your field of vision always remains clear because the window turns with you. The décor has a retro look and feel.
On the culinary front, the offerings are what you might call a reflection of Vienna and its environs, with local, traditional and seasonal specialties, wines from the region, etc.
I had no time to stop, but the thought of a relaxing beer or coffee in the café, watching the anthill of activity below, was one I’ll turn to reality sometime.
Incidentally, the tower also has a pub-restaurant on the ground floor, too, though with more limited opening times.
Ticket and visitor tips
Tickets are available, for example, from the tower direct or online sources.
(Booking service provided by Tiqets.com*, who I am an affiliate of)
Some tips:
- The Vienna Pass (see a review) gets you up the tower once for free
- I visited during the day, but I imagine Vienna by night on a clear evening provides quite a spectacular view.
- If you do want to eat/drink when there, check locally for seasonal opening days & times and whether reservations are necessary. Last time I looked, for example, the restaurant needed a reservation, but this also got you a significant discount on the tower entry & lift ticket
- On that topic, the Donauturm is one of my suggestions for a romantic dinner location. Choose from various romance packages to add to an existing reservation and look out for anything special on Valentine’s Day
- Check your accessibility needs before visiting. The Danube Tower is a listed building so it’s not possible to adapt it to all accessibility requirements
- Other locations in Vienna offer views across parts of the city, and I’ve listed your top options here
- If you have time, enjoy the park around the tower, too. The Donaupark has gardens rich in bees and butterflies, water features, a miniature railway, small sculptures, and wide grassy meadows particularly well-suited to tiring out kids
- Walk a couple of minutes to the northeast of the tower to find the Alte Donau
The huge Alte Donau lake was once part of the actual Danube and has lakeside cafés and restaurants (like The Bootshaus), boat hire, walks and cycle paths along the banks, and (in warmer seasons) public lidos and other bathing opportunities.
How to get to the Danube Tower
The tower sits between two subway stations:
- Take the U1 to the Alte Donau station
- Take the U6 to the Neue Donau station
Once at either subway station, catch the relatively sporadic 20A bus line to the Donauturm. The two main Hop On Hop Off bus lines also stopped at the tower last time I checked.
If you’re up for a 20 minute walk, go to the Alte Donau station and wander northwest along Arbeiterstrandbadstraße, then through the Donaupark (Danube Park) to the tower.
For rather obvious reasons, spotting the tower from afar is not a huge challenge.
Address: Donauturmstraße 8, 1220 Vienna | Website