Natural History Museum Vienna

The Naturhistorisches Museum opened in 1889 in one of the twin palaces on Maria-Theresien-Platz, built to hold collections that go back to Franz Stephan of Lorraine's cabinet bought in 1750, and it holds around thirty million objects across thirty-nine halls. Much of the display furniture is original, so you are looking at nineteenth-century museum practice as well as at the specimens - dense cases, hand-lettered labels, and rooms arranged by systematic order rather than by narrative. The single most important object is the Venus of Willendorf, a limestone figure about eleven centimetres high carved some twenty-nine thousand years ago and found in Lower Austria in 1908. There are meteorites in the largest such display anywhere, a Stellar's sea cow skeleton, dinosaur halls and a digital planetarium.

What you actually see

• The Venus of Willendorf - the 29,000-year-old limestone figure in its own room.
• Original 1889 display cases - nineteenth-century museum practice still in use.
• The meteorite collection - the largest on public display anywhere.
• Thirty-nine halls - systematic collections across the whole building.

When to go

All year; the roof tour runs in season. Half a day.

Honest expectations

It is enormous and the old-style dense cases tire people quickly - pick halls rather than trying all of them. Taxidermy is everywhere. Some galleries are dated by design and by intent.

Nearby

The Kunsthistorisches Museum is the twin building opposite; the Hofburg is next door.