Stargazing in Vienna can be exciting, here are our some of our favourite spots:
Thanks to our observatories you can explore the night sky while learning more about the solar system and our universe. Stargazing in Vienna is quite simple, you don’t even have to leave the city for it.
Right in the heart of our city, you can visit the Urania. It is Austria’s oldest and most modern observatory. Ludwig Baumann erected the first Urania building in the Prater during the Jubilee Exhibition in 1898. In 1899, the Urania had to make do with a modest courtyard space in Wollzeile. There it limited itself to lectures. The “Wiener Urania” got built according to plans by Otto Wagner student Max Fabiani. It opened on June 6, 1910. Today their numerous guided tours for children and adults offer a varied program. The focus is on observing the sun, moon and the bright planets.
The jewish entrepreneur Moriz von Kuffner founded the Kuffner Sternwarte, built from 1884 to 1886. Von Kuffner left Vienna in 1938. The Kuffner Observatory reopened as a public observatory in 1947. It took until 1995 for the Kuffner Sternwarte to become a branch of the Volkshochschule Ottakring (adult education centre). Today you can visit the observatory to learn more about the history of the building, the history of astronomy and our night sky.
Another place is the observatory of the University of Vienna, built in 1874-1879. Even today, the Vienna University Observatory is the largest observatory building in Europe. During lecture hours, public tours of the University Observatory are held regularly from October to January and from March to June.
If you want to learn more about our night sky you can also visit our planetarium. The Zeiss Planetarium, located in the Prater, reproduces the starry night sky with state-of-the-art projection technology. As a “star theater,” makes celestial science possible by day and night.
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