Guided Tours through the Imperial Treasury Museum
In cooperation with the viennese tour guide association Vienna Guides and with the highly qualified authors of history and arts publications of Wien Führungen, the Austrian tour operator City Tours offers two different kinds of guided tours through the Imperial Treasury Museum: on the one hand we offer overview guided tours, which are particularly designed for first visits to the Treasury Museum and also regularly available for school groups. On the other hand we offer themed tours, which we have designed for history and arts specialists but also for demanding school projects.
Guided overview tours through the Treasury Museum
During an overview guided tour with an average duration of one hour, you will see the most important items of the Treasury Museum, from the secular as well as from the ecclesiastical part. Guided overview tours can be organized for adult and students groups at any time within the opening hours of the Treasury Museum, guided tours outside the regular opening hours cannot be organised.
Overview guided tours to the Treasury museum Vienna are subject to the fees and conditions given in the "entrance fees" section of this website, namely:
Please be aware that schoolclasses and groups of students under the age of 19 have free access to the Treasury Museum, if they can present their ID card (with foto) or if there is a class list with names and dates of birth as well as a school stamp on it.
For booking an overview guided tour through the Vienna Imperial Treasury Museum for adult or student groups, please phone us at +43 1 966 02 61 or send us an e-mail to 
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Guided tours to the Imperial Treasury are also offered by the Vienna art history museum.
Themed guided tours in the Treasury Museum
In addition to the standard guided tours, the authors of history and arts publications of Wien Führungen offer a series of fascinating themed tours through the Imperial Treasury Museum. These special tours present historical information through anecdotes, accompanying you as recurrent themes from the beginning to the very end of the tour. These anecdotal tales usually guarantee for surprising revelations, when the guides build bridges between the historical material and the general knowledge of the participants.
We presently (2010) offer the following themed tours:
- The Imperial Insignia in the Treasury Museum (Schatzkammer): The Imperial Insignia and their history are presented in a themed guided tour through the Treasury Museum. We will answer the questions of their origin and their importance as well as deal with the question, why the imperial insignia are here in Vienna and not in Nuremberg or Aachen. We will also discuss with you number mysticism and the significance of the jewels, Biblical allegations and the veneration of relics, technial questions of how to produce and maintain the individual items, the relation between symbols and power, the sometimes challenging distinction between reproductions and fakes as well as the role of the imperial regalia as "relics cult" of the Third Reich.
- Relics cult and liturgy: this themed tour through the ecclesiastical section offers you partly fascinating partly shocking details concerning the veneration of saints, relics and liturgy during the course of the centuries. Burial rites as well as desecration and grave infringements, miraculous items and profane rites embedded in Christian cloth, the crimes committed in the name of Jesus Christ when evangelizing the New World and the consequences for Global History, piety in the Middle Ages confronted with the self perception of today's Catholic Church as well as the role of pilgrim preachers and mendicant monks during the Crusades and the Ottoman wars. The contents of this themed tour are designed for well-educated and critical adults and need special adaptation for school classes without accompanying school projects in history and religion.
- Crowns, unicorn and Holy Grail: this themed tour specially aims at primary education classes (under the age of 14). It focuses on astonishing tales, legends and Biblical stories relating to the Highlights of the Vienna Treasury Museum as well as gently approaching the children to the important topics of the State's and Imperial History.
Please note that you can book the above mentioned themed tours to the Imperial Treasury Museum not through www.wiener-schatzkammer.at, but exclusively on the Wien Führungen Website, and that the specialized themed tours are not offered at the same prices as overview tours.