Austria with kids

Fourteen hundred rooms, of which you see forty, and formal gardens behind. The maze and the Gloriette hill are what children remember.

The oldest zoo in the world, founded 1752, in the palace grounds — pandas, a rainforest house and a polarium. A separate ticket from the palace.

Sixty imperial coaches including the funeral carriage, in the Schönbrunn grounds. Fourteen dollars and quite unexpectedly gripping.

The tallest structure in Austria, twenty-three dollars, with a lift in thirty-five seconds and a revolving restaurant.

Hands-on across several floors, with a working coal mine in the basement. Twenty-one dollars and the best children's museum in the city.

A sound museum where you conduct the Vienna Philharmonic on screen and it plays badly if you are bad. Twenty-two dollars.

Bruegel, armour and an Egyptian wing in a palace of a building. Twenty-six dollars.

World cultures in the Hofburg, nineteen dollars, including Montezuma's feather headdress.

Uneven floors, no straight lines and trees growing out of the windows. Seven dollars and the most child-friendly art in the city.

The crown of the Holy Roman Empire, a narwhal tusk kept as a unicorn horn, and the imperial jewels. Nineteen dollars.

The empress's apartments and the story behind the myth, which is sadder than the films. Fifty-seven dollars guided.

Klimt's The Kiss, in a baroque palace with gardens. Twenty-seven dollars.

The tiled roof and the south tower's 343 steps. Thirty-four dollars with the museum, and the catacombs are extra.

A guided tour of the baroque stables and the history of the Lipizzaner horses. This is the stable visit, not a performance.

In the Musikverein, where the New Year's Day concert is broadcast from. Eighty dollars, and a named venue rather than a costumed tout.

In St Charles's Church, forty-four dollars. Music a child may already know, in a building worth the visit alone.

A little road train round the palace grounds, twenty dollars. The gardens are large and the legs are small.

Wooden cabins from 1897 turning slowly over the city, seventeen dollars. The funfair around it is free to walk into.

An immersive sound-and-projection room about his life. Twenty-seven dollars, and easier for a young child than a concert.

Forty-three dollars. The Ringstrasse palaces are further apart on foot than they look.

Eight dollars, self-guided, and the cheapest orientation in the city.

The flat Mozart lived in while writing Figaro, with the sound museum on the same ticket. Nineteen dollars for both.

A Danube boat through terraced vineyards and a baroque abbey with a library above it. A long, gentle day.

Three and a half hours each way to the lake village. A very long day — better as an overnight from Salzburg if you can.

Down the Danube to another country's capital and back by coach, in a day from Vienna. An hour each way and a genuinely different city.

Chamber Mozart in the fortress above the city, fifty dollars, with the funicular up included.

In the marble hall where Mozart played as a child. Fifty-three dollars and about an hour.

The highest zoo in Europe, all alpine species — bears, ibex, lynx — with the funicular up on the same ticket. Twenty-seven dollars.

The gazebo, the abbey and the lake, with the songs on the coach. Eighty-seven dollars and entirely unembarrassed about what it is.

Thirty-six dollars, with the Sound of Music locations on the route. The city is walkable; this buys the outskirts.

From the middle of Innsbruck to 2,300 metres in twenty minutes, on a funicular designed by Zaha Hadid.

The fortress funicular, the museums and the transport on one card. Forty-one dollars and it pays inside a day.

The lake village on every postcard, ninety-nine dollars with transport. Read the note about crowds first and go at opening.

The whole lake district rather than just the famous village, ninety-six dollars. The better version of the Hallstatt day.

Hitler's mountain retreat, now a restaurant, reached by a brass-lined lift through the rock. The history needs explaining first. Closed by snow October to May.