About Parks, Gardens & Nature in Vienna
Vienna is one of the greenest major cities in Europe: around half of the city's area is green space. And almost all of it is free to enter.
In the city center you'll find the Volksgarten with more than three thousand rose bushes and the Stadtpark, home to the most photographed monument in the city. The Belvedere Garden between the two palaces is free to enter and worth the trip on its own.
Farther out, things open up: Türkenschanzpark in Währing is a landscape garden from 1888 with trees that are hard to match anywhere; the Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark practically merges into the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald). Kurpark Oberlaa dates from the 1974 garden show.
Quite unique are Setagaya Park, a Japanese garden in the middle of a residential area, and the Kahlenberg, from where you can see the city from above.
The amount of green space is no accident but policy: Vienna's belt of woods and meadows was designated a protected zone in 1905 and still prevents the city from growing into its recreational areas.
For visitors, this means one thing above all: you need neither a budget nor a long journey. From Stephansplatz, public transport gets you to any of these parks in twenty to thirty minutes, and most are open year-round. In winter, some city-run parks close earlier because they aren't lit.