Private Jewish Vienna Walking Tour
Description
From the Middle Ages, the Jewish community in Vienna was one of Europe's largest. This 3-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
Pickup Locations & Times
Your private tour includes a pick-up at your central hotel or flat. If need be, your guide leads you by public transport to the tour sites. We don't include metro/tram tickets but your guide helps you purchase them if you don't have a Vienna Pass. If you prefer a meeting point, the tour begins at Jewish City Temple (Stadttempel) Seitenstettengasse 4, 1010 Wien.
Traveller Ratings
Important Information
- Wheelchair accessible
- Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
- Your tour guides are professors, doctoral students, historians, journalists, art critics, and published authors
Reviews(8)
We did not think the tour guide had either a deep feeling or knowledge ior Jewish culture in Vienna—the topic of our tour. We learned much more by ourselves in an hour on the fourth floor of the Leopold museum. The guide was well meaning and earnest (and amiable) but we didn’t think he was qualified to give that particular tour.
We are terribly sorry to read this review. We're usually so proud of our Jewish Vienna tour and the normally marvelous reviews! We took a risk on a new member of our team and, unfortunately, we overestimated his knowledge of this important subject because of the depth of his knowledge on many other topics in Vienna. Sorry for what is a rare fail in vetting our experts appropriately. I would like to offer you free credit for you or your friends to use on any Insight Cities tour in future. I will write you directly. Our mission is to give people unforgettable educational travel experiences and we did not deliver here. So sorry. Best --Bonita at Insight Cities
Our guide was well prepared complete with photos and videos about the historical significance of the sites we viewed. Her perspectives and knowledge were invaluable to bring the history to life. We highly recommend her.
Thank you very much for such a positive review! Elizabet at Insight Cities
My wife and I took our walking tour of Jewish Vienna with Annelie together with our children, ages 21 and 26. Annelie was a wonderful and knowledgeable guide, and she kept us all engaged the entire time. She used a microphone that fed into the ear-phones she provided us, which ensured that we were able to hear and understand her despite any traffic or other noise around us. We covered a lot of ground, both historically and geographically, taking public transportation out of the Inner City into the neighboring Second District. As an adjunct to her walking tour, she also brought visual aids, a book that included maps, paintings, woodcuts and photographs of the people, places and events that shaped Jewish Viennese history from medieval times through the Shoah to the present, as well as I-Pad three-dimensional visuals of old Vienna streets and houses. All in all, this tour is the one against which we will compare all other tours in the future. A thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding experience!
Annalie certainly knew her Vienna Jewish history. She gave us a quick overview at the hotel and then we proceeded to the underground train, me on my scooter and my husband on foot. We visited an old Orthadox schul guarded by police, but did not enter. We learned history of early Jewish settlers in Vienna. I bounced along the cobblestone streets and hills finding out about these early settlers and their accomplishments and their wives who entertained dukes and other nobles. We also saw a moving WW2 monument in the shape of a b library with books shelves backwards to remember those who would have no life to recall and write about. We were led to a small shop for a warm drink and ended in a grand salon for a snack worthy of our learning that day.
Thanks so much for the detailed review. Our Jewish heritage tours are very important to us, not only in Vienna, but also in Berlin, Prague and Budapest. Glad it met expectations. Have a great fall and travel safe!
My guide was very well prepared in all aspects of history. The reason im giving her 4 stars and not five is because it lacked sentiment there was more facts than storytelling and it really didn’t move me in the sad parts of history. But the guide was very well informes and made a big effort to be thorough.
The tour with Annelie exceeded all of our expectations. She met my family and me at our hotel and gave us earpieces so that we could all hear her clearly throughout. Annelie was incredibly knowledgeable, and she tailored the tour and her remarks to keep everyone fully engaged. She had a useful binder with photos and drawings and an iPad with short vignettes to bring more of the history to life. She also honored the fact that this was a special trip for us because I wanted to see the neighborhood where my grandparents lived, which was coincidentally and conveniently near Annelie’s home. Her familiarity with the neighborhood (which would be part of the regular tour since it’s the 2nd district) made the tour even more personal. She then recommended and dropped us off at a truly local Italian restaurant (what my two teenage sons requested!) after introducing us to the staff at the restaurant. I had really high hopes and expectations for the tour because it was such an important, personal occasion and, again, they were all exceeded. Annelie made the visit even more memorable. I cannot recommend the tour more highly.
Annelie was a terrific guide with lots of interesting stories and clearly knows Vienna and Austrian history very well. My fiancee and I had a great time with her and would highly recommend Annelie to anyone visiting Vienna
We were impressed of her great knowledge on the subject. It was a great opportunity of being able to refresh and enlarge our knowledge on the subject. Thanks a lot
We're so gratified that you enjoyed the tour. We'll hope to see you again on Insight Cities tours in Prague, Berlin and Budapest. We have great Jewish heritage tours in those cities as well, in additon to many other themed tours. Have a great summer.
