I am hoping someone could help me out with planning a visit to Schoenbrunn.
Firstly, do you recommend the %26#39;Imperial Tour with an audio guide%26#39;? Are the audio guides any good, or do I just need a good guide book?
It looks like the tour goes for 35 mins, do you need more time to explore the Palace.. can you back track easily? And when I am booking, am I booking an organised time to visit the Palace or is it just a prepurchased ticket to avoiding queuing in a line?
Also which gardens are worth walking through?
Hopefully my questions aren%26#39;t too silly. Appreciate any help you guys can provide me.
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Great questions. One more, how long should we plan to spend at the palace (helps when planning an itinerary). thanks
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I recently visited Shoenbrunn: Unfortunately, you can%26#39;t go inside the castle without paying for an audio tour.
We decided to skip the inside and focus on the outside, which was nice in the winter but would be magnificent once the flowers are in bloom.
With all there is to do outside (including the zoo), we didn%26#39;t miss not taking the tour. Can%26#39;t say for sure how good it is though, obviously.
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If you have not already looked to the Schönbrunn palace website - have a look
www.schoebrunn.at
it provides much information on tours , prices , etc.
It is really worth a tour inside - not just a look for outside- some list it as the most visited tourist site in Austria.
To me , it seems fewer visiteors in the afternoon compared to early morining most days.
The Grand tour covers 22 rooms - you ned much more than 35 minutes for this.
To avoid having too, too many propole in the palace at one time - tickets include an entrance time - this helps a little but it still gets very crowded in some rooms- the audio guide is good in my opinion. It lets you go through the rooms at your own pace and time - skipping ones that do not intereshe moving day from the Hofburg to Schönbrunn t you and spending more time in others - with an organized tour with guide , you stay to the opace of the group guide-
You could use a guide book but then you spend much time reading and looking at the book . The audio guide gives you the freedom to look around during the description- in various languages.
The Grand tour covers alomost 2 times the rooms and is a better bargain if you like visits to these places.
The rooms are very varied in style and uses.
One must remember that this Palace was originally a summer retreat and outside of the city - then country.
The move must have been interesting sexample Empress Maria Theresia - 16 children - the Imperial household and about 1500 Palace workers.
I would not buy an additional ticket for the smaller gardens- ( privy, maze ) the main garden directly behind the Palace is very nice to see - beautiful flower displays - now planted in the style of the centuries old Palace- they used old documents to revitalize the gardens a few years ago.
Many benches to sit admire the gardens , fountains and relax a little. Nice views.
Nice to walk toward Hietzing direction and door through the gardens to the Ubahn- nice rose garden, fountains and old palm houses-
You can easily spend many hours here - the zoo nearby in the gardens too.
Several cafes and restaurnbts too if you get hungry or thisty-
A small train to take you through the gardens , also hores carriages.
Often missed by tourists is the excelent display of Imperial carriges from the childrens small ones to the Imperial coach - the funeral coach too.
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If by %26quot;audio guide%26quot; you mean renting the head-sets and the audio explanation/guide, then the answer is %26quot;yes%26quot;. It really is great.
Otherwise, you really have to go with a guided tour, which leaves every so often. Or you go alone in silence.
I had been there before, but a couple years ago I took a group of Russian friends through Schoenbrunn, and we rented the %26quot;audio guide%26quot; (in Russian), and they all loved it. (Oh, I did too, again)
You say it lasts only 35 minutes, but maybe that is the total talking time. Actually, if you follow the instructions it lasts a couple three hours. I can%26#39;t imagine seeing Schoenbrunn in only 35 minutes. You%26#39;ll need, let%26#39;s say 4 hours. And it is well worth it!
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Thank you for your very informative post Vertical and other posters.
I%26#39;ve been warned not to compare the visit to Versailles, which we will being doing earlier in our trip. But I am looking forward to it nonetheless.
With our limited %26#39;history%26#39; in Australia, we really have nothing like this to compare to....
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My hsband and I intend to visit Schoenbrunn Palace on June 6th. If we arrived early, around 8:30am, would it be necessary to have a reservation? Is there a better time to arrive?
Thank you for your help.
jmp1937
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If you arrive at 08:30 you should not normally have to queue.
If you buy your tickets online you can arrive at any time and bypass the ticket queue. Got to the palace homepage:
http://www.schoenbrunn.at/en/home.html
and click %26quot;Buy tickets online%26quot; on the left hand side. You can even do this on the day (if you have access to a printer at your hotel) and keep your options flexible.
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Not sure when you are going, but we were in Schoenbrunn this week and there are NO AUDIO GUIDES- only a leaflet is available. We weren%26#39;t told that until after we had purchased tickets (we arrived at about 10:30 am and there was only a small line.) We were told that the audio guides are being %26#39;updated%26#39; but I don%26#39;t know when they will be available again. Reading our way through the tour was certainly less informative than the audio guide would have been, but there were several English-speaking tour groups being led through the palace when we were there, so we did hear some interesting information that wasn%26#39;t included in our leaflets. Might want to check to find out when the audio guides will be restored.
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We were there May 4th and there were only the English leaflets, no Enlish language audio guides and no live guides in Enlish.
So I doubt it takes them a month to update an audio guide, since in June the last commenter mentioned they too did not have the option of the audio guide.
When I phoned Schoenbrunn a couple of months before my trip to ask if they can tell me when their English tours on May 4th will be, they told me that any tours that are scheduled are scheduled only the day before. As I said earlier, it turned out that absolutely no English tours were being done that day (a Sunday when the place is really busy).
From that standpoint I was disappointed, because I had done a guided tour once before there and it was excellent. I wanted my mom to get the most out of the trip and she could not because of the limited resources provided by Schoenbrunn in English on that day.
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