Museum

Bestattungs Museum

📍 Bestattungs Museum, Vienna, Austria

1 photos

4.2/ 5.0

★★★★☆

Introduction

Founded by Vienna's municipal funeral company in 1967 and relocated beside the Central Cemetery in 2014, the Funeral Museum uses roughly a thousand artefacts to trace the city's famously professional culture of death. Exhibits include a reusable coffin with a hinged floor from the era of Joseph II, bells and strings designed to guard against premature burial, and centuries of hearses, mourning dress and mourning jewellery. Vienna's dark humour about mortality is on full display, and the cemetery's tree-lined avenues make a fitting epilogue.

✨ Highlights

Reusable coffin

Joseph II's hinged-floor coffin, meant to save timber until public anger killed the scheme.

Safety coffins

Bells and cords tied to the dead record the nineteenth-century panic over premature burial.

Hearses and black

Gilded baroque coaches, mourning dress and jewellery trace changing funeral fashion.

Central Cemetery

The graves of Beethoven, Schubert and more lie a short walk from the exit.

🛈 Practical Info

→Address：By the Central Cemetery grounds along Simmeringer Hauptstraße in Vienna's eleventh district.

→Transport：U3 to Simmering, then tram 71; or the S-Bahn to the Zentralfriedhof station.

→Tickets：Only a few euros — among the cheapest museum entries in the city, sold on site.

→Hours：Unusual opening pattern: weekdays in office hours plus limited Saturday time; closed Sundays.

→Time needed：About an hour inside; budget three including the cemetery avenues.

→Best for：Curiosity seekers, photographers of the unusual, and pilgrims to composers' graves.

💡 Tips

• Locals joke that tram 71 is the 'express to heaven' — riding it is part of the experience.

• Some displays are blunt about death; walk through first if visiting with children.

• The cemetery is huge: grab a section map at the gate and mark your target graves.

• Autumn chestnut leaves and low morning sun make the cemetery avenues especially photogenic.

FAQ

Any practical tips for visiting Bestattungs Museum?

Locals joke that tram 71 is the 'express to heaven' — riding it is part of the experience. Some displays are blunt about death; walk through first if visiting with children.

Information on this page is compiled from public sources. Opening hours, ticket prices and other details may change — please verify with official sources before your visit.