The best things to do in Graz are the Schlossberg and its clock tower, the Landeszeughaus with its 32,000 racked weapons, the Kunsthaus, Schloss Eggenberg and the Murinsel. The old town is small and flat, so almost all of it is walkable, and the funicular, the lift and the trams all run on the same zone 101 ticket. Give the city two days, and keep a third if you want the South Styrian wine road, which is about 45 minutes south by car.
Graz sits on the Mur where the eastern Alps flatten into the Styrian basin, close enough to Slovenia that its food and its architecture both borrow from the south. It is Austria's second city, and roughly 61,000 of its residents are students, which is why a UNESCO old town this intact never feels like a museum piece.
The 10 best things to do in Graz
1
Climb the Schlossberg to the clock tower
Landmark· Schlossberg, 8010 Graz
The hill is why the city is here, and the clock tower is why the hill is empty. Napoleon's terms in 1809 required the fortress to be pulled down, and the citizens paid a ransom to keep two pieces of it. What is left is a wooded park 123 metres above the Hauptplatz, with a funicular, a lift inside the rock and a stone stair.
Time2 hr
CostFunicular and lift on a Graz Linien zone 101 ticket
Best atThe hour before sunset
TipThe clock's long hand marks the hours and the short one the minutes
Around 32,000 weapons, suits of armour and pieces of equipment stand across four floors of the Styrian provincial arsenal, the largest historic armoury left anywhere. The point is the quantity: Styria was the frontier province facing Ottoman raids, and the stock was never broken up. It reads like a warehouse that stopped issuing.
Time1 hr
CostTicketed
Best atMorning
TipThe armoury is one of the Universalmuseum Joanneum houses
Peter Cook and Colin Fournier built this for the 2003 Capital of Culture year and named it the Friendly Alien themselves. The blue acrylic skin bulges over a 19th-century iron house on the Lend bank, and the nozzles on the roof are north-facing skylights. After dark the east face becomes a media façade of 930 rings.
Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg had the palace built as a model of time and the heavens, and the arithmetic is exact: 365 windows for the days, 31 rooms on each floor for the longest month, 24 state rooms for the hours. It was added to the Graz World Heritage listing in 2010, and the park has peacocks in it. Tram 1 stops at the gate.
Time2.5 hr
CostTicketed
Best atMidday
TipThe state rooms can only be seen on a guided tour
Pair the cathedral with the Mausoleum of Ferdinand II
Church· Burggasse 3, 8010 Graz
The Dom St. Ägidius went up between 1438 and 1462 in Gothic and was reworked in Baroque over the next three centuries. What is not ordinary is the fresco on the outer south wall: the Landplagenbild of 1485 records the three plagues that hit the city that year. Next door, the Mausoleum of Ferdinand II was begun in 1614.
Time45 min
CostCathedral free
Best atMorning
TipFind the Landplagenbild on the outside wall before you go in
The New York artist Vito Acconci moored a steel shell in the middle of the Mur for the 2003 Capital of Culture year: about 50 metres long and open at the top like a half-twisted net. Two footbridges connect it to each bank, so it works as a crossing as well as a sculpture. It was designed as temporary and never left.
Emperor Frederick III had the Burg built as his residence, and in 1499 a mason cut this staircase into a corner tower. Two flights wind in opposite directions, separate at every half turn and touch again at each floor, which earned it the name of the staircase of reconciliation. It stands open and free.
The main square has been triangular since the 12th century and still holds the sausage stands, the tram junction and the town hall. The fountain is Archduke Johann with the four rivers of Styria at his feet. Herrengasse runs south as the pedestrian spine, past arcaded courtyards that are almost never signposted.
Time1 hr
CostFree
Best atSaturday morning
TipPush through the unmarked passageways off Herrengasse
Domenico dell'Allio built the Landhaus for the Styrian estates between 1557 and 1565, and its courtyard is the most complete piece of Lombard Renaissance architecture in the country: three storeys of arcades and a bronze well canopy of 1590. It is still the seat of the Styrian parliament, so it is in use rather than preserved.
Graz's largest church went up between 1881 and 1887 in brick neo-Gothic, and its tower reaches 109.6 metres, the tallest in Styria. From most of the eastern districts it is the landmark you navigate by. The interior is high, narrow and unusually bright for the style. The square in front is the organic market on Tuesdays.
Time30 min
CostFree
Best atTuesday afternoon
TipThe organic market on Bischof-Zwerger-Platz runs Tuesdays from 14:00 to 18:00
Two. The first covers the old town: the Schlossberg, the armoury, the cathedral and the Burg staircase, with the Lend bank and the Kunsthaus in the afternoon. The second takes tram 1 out to Schloss Eggenberg and leaves time for a market and a museum. Add a third day only if you want the wine road or Riegersburg.
Is Graz walkable?+
Almost entirely. The UNESCO core is flat and mostly pedestrianised, and you can cross it end to end in about 20 minutes. The two exceptions are Schloss Eggenberg, which is 20 minutes out on tram 1, and the Schlossberg itself, which has a funicular and a lift inside the rock if you would rather not climb it.
What is Graz known for?+
Two UNESCO listings in one city, the historic old town from 1999 and Schloss Eggenberg from 2010, plus the largest surviving historic armoury in the world. It has also been a UNESCO City of Design since 2011, which is where the Kunsthaus and the Murinsel come from, and it trades hard on Styrian produce.
Do you need a car for the day trips?+
Not for all of them. Trains run south to Leibnitz and Ehrenhausen for the wine road and on to Maribor in just over an hour, and buses reach Stübing and Köflach. A car helps for Riegersburg and for driving the ridge road between the cellar doors, where the point is the stopping rather than the arriving.
When is the best time to visit Graz?+
Late spring and September. May and June bring the terraces and the Styriarte concerts without the August heat, and September stacks Aufsteirern and the opening of steirischer herbst into the same few weeks while the markets are at their best. December is the other case worth making, for the Advent markets and the ice nativity.
Where to eat
Best restaurants in Graz
Styrian cooking runs from the vaulted Wirtshaus to a Michelin dining room, often on the same street.
Innere Stadt
Der Steirer
Styrian classics and small plates
The reliable answer to where to eat Styrian food without booking weeks out. Backhendl, Käferbohnen and a wine list that stays inside the province.
Serving in the same building for more than 450 years, in a Renaissance courtyard off Schmiedgasse. Traditional Austrian plates done properly rather than reinvented.
Halfway up the Schlossberg with the city laid out below and a modern Austrian kitchen that earns the view rather than trading on it. Book the terrace and go at dusk.
Alexander Posch cooks a market menu of about ten courses from what the stalls outside had that morning. The most literal argument for Graz as a food city.
An old inn on Bürgergasse behind the cathedral, with a garden courtyard and the long Styrian standards on the menu. The city before it had a design label.
The Styrian bakery chain everyone here grew up on, with a long bread counter and one of the few places open on Sunday morning. Order a Kürbiskernweckerl.
A pavilion on the edge of the Stadtpark dating from 1870, run now as one of the freshest rooms in the city. Breakfast under the trees is the best value here.
The student population sets the pace, and the Lend bank and the Stadtpark set the geography.
Stadtpark
Kombüse
DJs Thursday to Saturday
A small wooden bar in the Stadtpark that opens after 22:00 from Thursday to Saturday and runs a different DJ each night. Dancing until it is properly light again.
A 1928 pavilion built against the old city wall, working as a terrace café in daylight, a bar in the evening and a club at the weekend. Three venues in one address.
The city's serious cocktail room: gin, whisky and old rum done straight, with live music on Tuesday nights. Where to go when the student bars are too loud to talk in.
The Universalmuseum Joanneum was founded in 1811 and still runs most of what follows.
Joanneumsviertel
Neue Galerie Graz
Art from 1800 to now, 70,000 works
The province's modern and contemporary collection, reached through the sunken glass entrance in the Joanneumsviertel. Strong on Austrian painting either side of 1900.
The history of the province told through its own objects, with a visible-storage floor that shows the collection as it is kept. The most useful hour for context.
Everyday Styrian life, costume and craft, in an old monastery below the Schlossberg. The direct explanation of what you will see at Aufsteirern in September.
Botany, geology, mineralogy and zoology from the Joanneum's founding collections, redisplayed in the modern quarter. The best of the city's museums for children.
A small museum inside the surviving Schlossberg buildings, covering how the fortress worked and why almost none of it is left. Pair it with the walk up.
The right-bank market and the more local of the two big ones, ringed by bars that open as the stalls come down. Come for the produce, stay for the square.
The organic market, in front of the Herz-Jesu church and the only one that runs in the afternoon. Certified producers only, so it is the shortest list of stalls.
The left bank opposite the old town, anchored by the Kunsthaus and the Lendplatz market. Immigrant-run kitchens, second-hand shops and the densest run of bars.
South of Lend on the same bank, the most international quarter in Graz and the one that has changed most in a decade. Studios and offices alongside the older shops.
North of the centre and largely academic: the main university campus, the botanical garden, and cafés that empty in August. Green and calm without being far out.
Where every tram line meets, at Jakominiplatz, and where the city gets on with its week. Cheaper beds than the centre, and the Kaiser-Josef market on the northern edge.
Styria is small and the trains go south. None of these needs more than a day.
Südsteiermark
South Styrian Wine Road
About 45 minutes south
A 25 kilometre run of ridge road through Ehrenhausen, Gamlitz and Leutschach, with cellar doors most of the way. Sauvignon blanc is what the region is known for.
A fortress on the plug of an extinct volcano, never taken, with a witchcraft museum inside. The Zotter chocolate factory sits at the foot of the same hill.
Where the Lipizzaner horses of the Spanish Riding School are bred before they go to Vienna. Foals are dark and turn white with age, which is what people come to check.
Around a hundred historic farmhouses moved here from every Austrian province and rebuilt along a wooded valley. One of the ten largest open-air museums in Europe.
St. Barbara's church was rebuilt by Hundertwasser in 1987, so an ordinary parish church now carries gold onion domes and no straight lines. A glass museum next door.
Electronic music, art and political discourse, staged partly in the tunnels inside the Schlossberg.
Mar
Diagonale
The festival of Austrian film, held in Graz cinemas across six days with the year's domestic features and shorts.
Jun
Styriarte
The classical festival founded in 1985 to give Nikolaus Harnoncourt a summer home in his own province. Late June and July.
Jul
La Strada
Street theatre, puppetry and outdoor performance across the squares and the riverbanks, most of it free.
Sep
Aufsteirern
The old town given over to Styrian folk culture for a weekend: brass, dirndl, regional food and craft on every square.
Sep
steirischer herbst
Founded in 1968 and still one of Europe's oldest festivals of the avant-garde, running new theatre, art and music.
Oct
Lange Nacht der Museen
The Austria-wide museum night, when the Joanneum houses and most smaller collections stay open late on one ticket.
Dec
Grazer Advent
More than a dozen Christmas markets across the squares of the old town, plus the ice nativity in the Landhaushof.
Getting around
Graz transport & airports
How to arrive and move around the city.
GRZ
Graz Airport
About 9 kilometres south of the centre. The S5 train reaches it from the Hauptbahnhof in roughly 12 minutes, every 15 minutes, with a covered walkway to the terminal.
Graz Hauptbahnhof sits west of the centre, three tram stops from Hauptplatz. Railjet runs hourly to Vienna in about two and a half hours, and southbound trains reach Slovenia.
Holding Graz Linien runs the network inside fare zone 101, which stretches as far as the airport. One ticket covers trams, buses and the funicular; the old town tram is free.
The old town is flat, compact and largely pedestrianised, so almost nothing inside it needs a ticket. The Mur cycle path runs the length of the city on both banks.
Austria
