The Vienna Hofburg: Sisi Museum, Imperial Apartments, Treasury and who sells each visit

The short answer

The Hofburg is a complex, not an attraction, and no ticket covers all of it. The Spanish Riding School's FAQ puts it plainly: in general, there is no single ticket that allows access to all areas of the Hofburg.[14] What a visitor actually buys is one of several separate visits inside it, each with its own operator: the Sisi Museum and Imperial Apartments from the Schönbrunn Group, the Imperial Treasury from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Spanish Riding School's performances and tours, and the State Hall of the Austrian National Library.

Two closures matter this autumn. The museum section of the Sisi Museum is closed from 6 October to 18 November 2026 for the final phase of its refurbishment, while the Imperial Apartments stay open. The Silver Collection has been closed since 1 April 2023 until further notice.[1]

What the Hofburg is

The Burghauptmannschaft Österreich, the federal office that looks after the building, dates the Hofburg to 1275 and describes it as the centre of the Habsburg monarchy until 1918; today it serves state purposes, including the seat of the Federal President, and houses museums.[13] The Schönbrunn Group's history page gives its scale as 240,000 square metres, 18 wings, 19 courtyards and 2,600 rooms.[5]

Its list of occupants shows how divided the building is. Alongside the Federal President's office, the Federal Chancellery, the foreign ministry and the OSCE, the Burghauptmannschaft names the Albertina, the Kunsthistorisches Museum's Ephesus Museum, Treasury and Weltmuseum, the Austrian National Library, the Austrian Film Museum, the Schönbrunn company's Imperial Apartments, Sisi Museum and Silver Collection, and the Spanish Riding School.[13] The Burghauptmannschaft is the custodian of the building, not the seller of museum tickets; what kind of body it is, and how it differs from the operators inside, is set out in who runs Austria's imperial palaces and collections.

Sisi Museum and Imperial Apartments

The best-known Hofburg visit is run by Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H., the company that also runs Schönbrunn Palace.[6] According to the Sisi Museum's ticket page, one day ticket includes admission to both the Sisi Museum and the Imperial Apartments, the ticket has fixed admission times, and genuine tickets are available online exclusively at imperialtickets.com.[1]

The apartments are the rooms of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth. The operator's apartments page says the Imperial Chancellery Wing and the Amalia Residence, which contained their apartments, are the parts open to the public, while most other former imperial apartments now house museums, offices, ministries and the presidential chancellery.[4] Its history page counts 24 rooms, comprising studies, residential suites and reception rooms.[5] The Sisi Pass description gives the entrance as the Michaelerkuppel.[1]

The Sisi Museum is the exhibition about Empress Elisabeth. During the refurbishment, the Sisi Museum's ticket page says revised hours and a reduced ticket price apply; the page lists current prices.[1] The museum's own page says the museum area will be closed until the newly redesigned Sisi Museum opens on 19 November.[2] XTOUR has not seen the redesigned museum and does not describe it.

The Sisi Pass combines this ticket with Schönbrunn Palace and the Vienna Furniture Museum, and its description says no entrance-time reservation is needed for the Sisi Museum. That differs from the single day ticket, which is sold with fixed admission times.[1] The Schönbrunn ticket guide covers the pass from the palace side.

The Silver Collection

The operator's own legal notice and Hofburg history page still name the Silver Collection among what it runs and shows.[5][6] Its ticket page and its current-information page, dated 20 July 2026, say it has been closed since 1 April 2023 until further notice, while the company expands the exhibition rooms and creates a new tour.[3][1] Until the operator announces a reopening, XTOUR treats it as not part of the visit.

The Imperial Treasury

The Treasury, the Kaiserliche Schatzkammer, is a different museum with a different operator. The Kunsthistorisches Museum lists it among its collections housed in Hofburg Palace, and the KHM forms the KHM-Museumsverband with the Weltmuseum Wien and the Theatermuseum.[12] Its address is the Hofburg's Schweizerhof,[7] and the Schönbrunn Group's history of the palace places the Treasury in the Schweizertrakt, the oldest part of the Hofburg.[5]

It has two halves. The Secular Treasury holds the insignia and jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, including the Imperial Crown and the Holy Lance, the crown of Rudolf II that later became the crown of the Austrian Empire, and the vestments of the Order of the Golden Fleece. It also keeps two objects that, the page says, were once declared "inalienable heirlooms of the House of Austria": a narwhal tooth taken for a unicorn's horn and an agate bowl from late antiquity thought to be the Holy Grail.[7] The Ecclesiastical Treasury traces the cult of relics, Habsburg Catholicism, the Counter-Reformation and Austrian folk piety.[8]

On tickets, the Treasury's entrance-fee page says that from 1 April 2026 admission is available exclusively during reserved time slots, and that the time-slot ticket gives a single entry on the chosen date and time with no time limit on the visit itself.[9] Its FAQ adds that tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded, and that visitors under nineteen are admitted free to the federal museums.[10]

The Treasury sells two combined tickets: "Treasures of the Habsburgs" with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and "Empress Elisabeth" with the Imperial Carriage Museum.[9] Its pages disagree on what a combined ticket allows. The combined-tickets page says "Treasures of the Habsburgs" is valid for one year from purchase; the FAQ says a combi-ticket gives one entry to each museum on the dates and at the time selected when buying.[10][11] Check the conditions shown at checkout before relying on either.

The Spanish Riding School and the State Hall

The Spanish Riding School performs in the Winter Riding School in the Hofburg and sells its own tickets; its FAQ says it offers no combined ticket with other Hofburg attractions.[14] Its performances, Morning Exercise and guided tours are compared in the Spanish Riding School guide.

The two operators describe the history of the stables differently. The Riding School's guided-tour page says the Lipizzan stallions have been stabled in the Stallburg for more than 450 years, while the Schönbrunn Group's history of the Hofburg says the Stallburg has contained the stables since the eighteenth century.[5][15] XTOUR does not resolve the difference.

The State Hall, the Prunksaal, is run by the Austrian National Library. Its page describes the hall at Josefsplatz 1 as built in the eighteenth century as part of the former Court Library, almost 80 metres long and 20 metres high, with about 200,000 historical books. The library sells its own tickets and announces event closures on that page.[16]

What XTOUR does not tell you

XTOUR publishes no prices, opening hours, last-admission times or time-slot availability for any of these visits, and nothing on accessibility inside the Hofburg. It does not say how long the visits take or which order to do them in, and it holds no walking times between the Hofburg's entrances. It does not sell tickets for any of them.

The Vienna destination page sets the Hofburg among the city's other sights. Who runs Austria's imperial palaces and collections explains the operators behind these visits and the others in Austria.