Official review: "Literature Museum" (Vienna)

LOCATION. The museum is at the mid-point between Stephansplatz and Karlsplatz. Expect a ten-minute walk. If you start off from Karlsplatz, step away from the parks and go north along Karntner Strasse. Hike your way into the pedestrian zone and past the church. Turn right into Johannesgasse and you’ll be there within a minute.

"Literature Museum" (Vienna)


CROWD CONTROL CHECK. This is a lonely poor thing, and by far the most uncrowded attraction I can find in Central Vienna. Don’t underestimate its size – two floors of permanent showcases, throw another one in for changing exhibitions. Imagine what it’s like to stroll across videos screens and alleys of descriptions, artifacts, excerpts – only to meet no one else but two staffers along the way.

After buying your ticket you’ll be given an iPad “audio” guide (not a hiss ever comes out of it I’m not sure if that’s the right name). As you walk from checkpoint to checkpoint you have to literally touch the sticker at the back of your pad to the round icons on the wall and with the right orientation. An English translation will appear on the screen. Only those general introductory texts will be translated though, and only in the permanent galleries.

Clip: "Literature Museum" (Vienna)


The gallery sets up Austria’s literary scenes by tracing them back to their Catholic and enlightenment roots. And then find yourself in an anthology of entropy gone wild, an ambitious journey that travels through the larger German-speaking world with a hint of its complex linguistic relationships with the Czech and its Prague authors and back into the wider German sprachraum and the apolitical tendencies of Austrian novels to be sprinkled with examples of how stories interact with the pop culture and…

A magnificent feat indeed. A little more hint of its relevance might just save the place.


Time is asset: save it for better with 25-min museum tours. Or find yourself in my novel, check out the photo of the day and finish it off with a secret prize.

Tags - in_depth_tourism; museum; London_writer; London_travel; indie_writer; independent_blogger

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