Jewish Vienna Walking Tour
Description
From the Middle Ages, the Jewish community in Vienna was one of Europe's largest. This 2.5-hour Jewish Vienna tour explores the tumultuous experiences of Vienna’s Jewish citizens through expulsion, genocide, and revival. Your historian guide will help you to discover the influential contributions of past intellectual and cultural icons and the fragile revitalization of Vienna’s Jewish community taking place today. We begin outside the Jewish City Temple before winding through the second district to the destroyed Leopoldstädter Temple. Visiting the Nestroyhof Theater with its stunning Art Nouveau exterior, once home to Yiddish-speaking ensembles, we reflect on brilliant leaders of Vienna’s intellectual, political, and economic spheres from the Jewish community: Sigmund Freud, Theodor Herzl, Karl Krauss, Franz Werfel, and Gustav Mahler. Learning of the victims and survivors of Nazi genocide, we visit destroyed Ashkenazi and Sephardic synagogues and the Judenplatz Holocaust memorial.
Tour Options
Itinerary
Outside the beautiful doors of the Jewish City Temple, we consider the how the Viennese Jewish Community had to keep their synagogues barely visible from the street despite their influential role in their city's development over centuries. Few European cities have been so closely intertwined with Jewish history as Vienna. Outside this important temple, we learn of Jewish life and increasing settlement in Vienna from the Middle Ages, despite dramatic expulsions. We don't visit the interior but we recommend that you contact the synagogue to arrange a tour with their own guides, open April to October, Monday to Thursday. If you take the 11:30 AM Monday synagogue tour and then enjoy your lunch, you are in the perfect place to begin our 2:00 PM tour of Jewish Vienna. If you take the 2:00 PM synagogue tour on Tuesday and Thursdays, it will fit well after our 9:30 AM Tuesday and Thursday tour with a lunch break.
We consider the influence of Vienna's modern Jewish community on every aspect of the city's cultural life from outside the Nestroyhof Theater with its stunning Art Nouveau exterior, once home to Yiddish-speaking ensembles.
Winding through Vienna's second district, to visit the memorial site of the destroyed Leopoldstädter Temple. Today, it is symbolized by four imposing white columns reaching up into the sky.
Learn of the victims and survivors of Nazi genocide and the phenomenon of antisemitism in Europe while visiting the destroyed synagogues of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic congregations and the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial.
Highlights
What's included
Traveller Ratings
Important Information
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
- Your tour guides are professors, doctoral students, historians, journalists, art critics, and published author
Reviews(41)
Our guide Annanelli was excellent. Easy to understand and gave us much insight. Loved that she included things about how things related to her.
Thank you for the wonderful review. We're so pleased you enjoyed your tour. Hope to see you on another Insight Cities tour in Prague, Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, or Salzburg. Safe travels!
This was a fabulous 2.5 hr tour! Annalie, our guide was excellent! She was knowledgeable about the history of Jewish communities through the ages as well as cultural info you wouldnt find in history books. She was able to answer all of our questions and due to her varied background had personal knowledge and experiences to share. Her English was excellent making listening to her easy. This was a private tour for 4 of us and initially we thought it was very expensive. However, at the end of the tour we all agreed it was worth it. Additionally, this was not just a recitation of all the traumas, though this was discussed in a straightforward manner, but also of all of the contributions Viennese Jewish citizens made to Austria and the world. It was a refreshing and interesting take on a Jewish walking tour. I highly recommend it.
Thank you for the wonderful review. We're so pleased you enjoyed your tour. Hope to see you on another Insight Cities tour in Prague, Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, or Salzburg. Safe travels!
Our tour leader was knowledgeable and informative. She told lots of stories and showed us all around Vienna taking us back in time and into the present. Her pictures and stories brought the landscape to life.
Thank you for the wonderful review. We're so pleased you enjoyed your tour. Hope to see you on another Insight Cities tour in Prague, Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, or Salzburg. Safe travels!
Fabulous encyclopedic tour of Judaism and Jewish history (and some interesting architectural touring too) a fabulously informed and plannned tour.
Thank you for the wonderful review. We're so pleased you enjoyed your tour. Hope to see you on another Insight Cities tour in Prague, Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, or Salzburg. Safe travels!
Barbara took us on a very informative and interesting tour. We learned how the experiences of Jews were integrated into the history of Vienna in both good and bad times. Highly recommended.
Thank you for the wonderful review. We're so pleased you enjoyed it. Hoping to see you on another Insight Cities tour in Prague, Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, or Salzburg. Safe travels!
The tour was informative and moving and coincidently took place on October 7th, 2025. My daughter and I highly recommend this tour if you are interested in Jewish history.
Thank you so much for the great feedback. We'll definitely pass that on to your guide. Safe travels.
Long gave us a wonderful tour. She was very prepared with maps and photos. She answered every question and put the history in context. Her complete explanation of the various stages of the history was interesting
Thanks for the warm feedback. That makes our day. And thanks for recommending Insight Cities tour to your friends traveling to Prague, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest and Salzburg. Safe travels!
Jan was an amazing guide!!! He is very knowledgeable and friendly. We learned a lot about Vienna and its Jewish history.
Thank you so much for the great feedback. We'll definitely pass that on to your guide. Safe travels.
We had the pleasure of touring "Jewish Vienna" with guide Annelie on 8/21/2025. Unfortunately, an accident on a major roadway held up traffic and prevented Annelie from meeting us on time. However, she called us, kept us informed and went out of her way to "make it up" for us. Annelie was everything you would want a tour guide to be, engaging and well informed on the subject matter. In addition to pointing out and explaining key sites she augmented her talk by showing us pictures in a binder of what key sites and people looked like in the past. The tour was small - my husband and I and two others, and Annelie checked in with all of us periodically to ensure she was addressing our interests and answering our questions. She also answered questions about some sites we were looking to find/experience after the tour. Thank you Annelie and Viator for helping us to experience Jewish Vienna.
Thank you for taking the time to review. We're proud to work with such terrific guides. Hope to see you again on Insight Cities tours in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and Salzburg. Please tell your friends!
Peter was excellent! He shared the history with interesting information, both historical and personal. He is very personable and is a very good storyteller. He also gave good restaurant suggestions, which we appreciated. We would highly recommend Peter and this tour.
Thank you so much for the great feedback. We'll definitely pass that on to your guide. Safe travels.
