Volksgarten

Napoleon's troops blew up the Burgbastei in 1809, and the ground was laid out from 1823 as a garden - opened to the public from the start, which the name records. It is formal where the Stadtpark is landscape: axial paths, clipped hedges and around three thousand rose bushes in some four hundred varieties in beds that are the reason most people come between May and September. The Theseustempel of 1821 by Pietro Nobile, a scaled version of the Theseion in Athens, stands at one end and was built to hold Canova's Theseus group, now in the Kunsthistorisches; it is used for small contemporary art installations. A marble memorial to Empress Elisabeth of 1907 sits in the shrubbery at the other end, and the Burgtheater and Hofburg close the sides.

What you actually see

• Around three thousand roses - some four hundred varieties in formal beds.
• The Theseustempel - Nobile's 1821 Greek temple, now an art space.
• The Elisabeth memorial - the 1907 marble monument at the far end.
• A garden on a blown-up bastion - laid out after the French demolition of 1809.

When to go

May to September for the roses; June is the peak. An hour.

Honest expectations

Outside the rose season the beds are bare and the garden is plain. It is small and busy, sitting between the Hofburg and the Ring on a main tourist route.

Nearby

The Hofburg, Burgtheater and Heldenplatz are immediately around it.