There are three million dead people in Vienna — a million more than those who are alive. Centuries of plagues and wars — with the church teaching that the reward comes after you’re dead, so suck it up now — have given the Viennese a morbid fascination with death. Death is treated tongue-in-cheek, and it’s seen as a natural part of life that shouldn’t be ignored. As Viennese composer and poet Georg Kreisler once said, “Death must be Viennese.”
At the invitation of Vienna Tourism, I came to Vienna on Halloween to experience the spooky side of a city that is at ease with death. But for me, this has a personal side: as someone raised in a conservative, evangelical world, I didn’t grow up with this holiday; this is my first Halloween as an adult.
Yes, you read that correctly.
I was around seven years old when I last celebrated Halloween. I was dressed as a stormtrooper. I remember it because I got a box of Pop Rocks that someone filled with sand. My conservative Christian home (I’m a pastor’s kid) eventually saw Halloween as a gateway to the occult, and something that lauded the demonic and death. Physical death was thought of as punishment for spiritual death: sin. The world around us, I was told, is full of the walking dead — human beings who were spiritual corpses and unaware that they were destined for the garbage heap of hell without Jesus.
And now, even as a non-believing adult and walking corpse, and even long after I left that faith and the idea of demons and hell behind, I still never celebrated Halloween again. It wasn’t because I believed it was evil; it was just never part of my life — it was a non-thing for me.
Bring Out Your Dead
So here I was in Vienna to experience Halloween as an adult through the theme of Vienna’s dead. The Viennese keep their dead and the macabre close. This is the place that’s known for its phrase “Schone Leich,” or “the beautiful corpse,” where funerals become ostentatious celebrations and where Halloween is less about masks and more about visiting Central Cemetery on All Saints Day.
Death lives in the Viennese psyche. Even Vienna’s famous quantum physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, couldn’t help but describe the superposition of two quantum states in terms of a cat in a box being both simultaneously dead and alive. So to experience this uniquely Viennese thinking, I made a few stops in the city.
My first stop was Josephinum. When doctors wanted to understand the body they came up with methods to recreate what they saw. Built in 1785, the Josephinum is an incredible collection of 1,200 wax models, along with older medical devices and textbooks. The wax body parts, corpses splayed open, and their various maladies on show, are realistic representations and not for the faint of heart.
Just around the corner is Madhouse Tower, where jars of real body parts are stored in rooms and giant cysts sit on shelves. Emperor Josef II built the tower in 1784, when it served as an asylum. After that, it housed nuns who saw these dank cells built for the mentally ill and thought, “I could live there.”
By 1971, it found a new life as an anatomy and pathology exhibit with approximately 50,000 pieces in their collection. Today, there is a museum and behind the scenes tours, where cell doors are opened and organs and faces are found in jars or mummified. It allows students to study diseases and guests to see every horror the human body has met.
Underground at the Central Cemetery is the Funeral Museum, which houses an historical collection ranging from death coaches (the precursor to the hearse) to different types of coffins, like a fungus coffin to decompose a body or a reusable coffin, where you can pull a lever and the body disappears out the bottom through a trapdoor. (Jealous, Vegas magicians?) They also have a reusable heart palpitation knife, which they stabbed in the heart to make sure someone was dead. No one wants to be buried only mostly dead.
From there you can take a leisurely stroll through the cemetery, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, and where the Viennese can be found on All Saints Day. There you can find musicians like Beethoven, Strauss and Brahms decomposing. Keep an eye out for other unusual gravesites, like the smoking cat, or a woman cheating on her husband by copulating with death, or the plot of Hedy Lamar, an inventor-turned-actress who became the first woman to simulate an orgasm on the big screen.
The Imperial crypt is a collection of dead Habsburgs — 150 family members, including royalty. Decorated in absolutely relatable skulls and symbols of power, the sarcophagi are opulent. The Habsburgs were known to put their hearts in jars, like ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, keeping them (54 total) in the Heart Crypt of the Church of the Augustinian Friars. This allowed them to have more than one funeral and to have devout Catholics say more than one prayer for their souls. As a guide joked, most people rest in peace; the Habsburgs rest in pieces.
All of these body parts in jars and corpses on display had me famished, so when it was time to eat at Gmoakeller, a restaurant staple of Vienna that’s been there since 1858, I ordered the only thing that seemed appropriate: pig brains with egg. It was lightly seasoned and, as you might expect, soft. If you weren’t told what you were eating, it wouldn’t be recognizable. I still don’t imagine myself craving it in the future, unless I’m a zombie.
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Food meets culture in this gorgeous European capitalThe Post-Mortem
As I made my way through town on buses and the subway on Halloween night, I saw very few costumes. My host tells me that the American idea of Halloween is slowly making its way into Vienna, though it is currently mostly for kids and students. Like the Viennese, death for me is a natural part of life. I’m one of billions of primates that will come and go in this world. I don’t need to be a beautiful corpse either. Just throw me in a fungus coffin and let me go.
Halloween, however, may need to become for me like other holidays that offer reflection — in this case of the thin line between life and death. Next year, though, I’ll celebrate it more like an American. For now, I strolled through the streets of Vienna as one of the walking dead, a non-believer who decided to end my journey with a drink at the oldest cocktail bar in Vienna: Loos American Bar (1908), where I ordered myself their Corpse Reviver 2. It only seemed right.
Where to Stay
You don’t have to come on Halloween to have your own deadhead tour. When you visit, there are three stays near enough of what you’re looking for and that won’t disappoint.
If you want to be close to the action of the largest tourism section, where you’ll find museums, the Opera House and restaurants, this boutique hotel is perfectly located, while also being a hidden gem. The over-a-century-old Hotel Zur Wiener Staatsoper was remodeled and re-opened in 2024.
Their standard rooms are elegant, timeless and comfortable with spacious bathrooms and walk-in showers. Rooms are named after composers; I had the Verdi room. Breakfast is included and anytime you’re jonesing for wine or espresso, their lounge is waiting.
Two days before my death adventure, I stayed at Hotel MOTTO, a boutique hotel in a trendy section of Vienna (think cocktail bars, restaurants and shopping) with a wellness and fitness center, including a sauna. Their Parisian inspired chic room is spacious, stylish and open. Comfortable beds and a lounging area with a couch make this a great place to kick back.
Their restaurant and bar, CHEZ BERNARD, is a warm lounge under French influence with organic food. The staff are friendly, the menu is creative and the drinks are flowing. The art deco bar sits under a dome and is flush with plants and light. With its wide staircase and elevator that belongs to another era, it doesn’t disappoint.
The Imperial Riding School (Autograph Collection)
The Imperial Riding School (Autograph Collection) was recently opened after being closed for four years and then remodeled. Once Emperor Franz Joseph I military equestrian school in the 19th century, the hotel design provides nods to that history. Bedside lights, for example, are shaped like riding flasks. It’s an elevated hotel that is both elegant and inviting.
Their restaurant, Elstar, and The Farrier Bar offer interpretations of Viennese cuisine and the wonderful cocktails. It’s the kind of hotel where guests and locals can easily lounge and relax. It’s located in the Landstraße district, near museums and historical landmarks, like Belvedere Palace.
Getting Around Vienna
You don’t have to blow a bunch of Euros on Uber to get around Vienna. Use their City Card for 24- or 72-hour access to public transit. In conjunction with Google Maps or CityMapper, Vienna’s transit is one of the easiest I’ve taken, and it’s done in the honor system. You don’t have to scan an app or tap in and out.
Or you can just walk. If it’s Halloween, I recommend dressing like a zombie if you do.
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