Hundertwasserhaus Vienna: Free to Look At, Closed to Visitors, With a Paid Museum Five Minutes Away

The Hundertwasserhaus is one of the most photographed buildings in Vienna, and you can't go inside. It's a council housing block. People live there. It was built between 1983 and 1985 on the corner of Kegelgasse and Löwengasse in the 3rd district, designed by the painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser with the architects Josef Krawina and Peter Pelikan.

It holds 53 flats and 4 offices, 16 private terraces and around 250 trees and shrubs planted on the roofs and balconies. Hundertwasser hated straight lines.

Winter, by the look of the bare trees. Patches of red, blue, ochre and white running across the facade, windows of every size, tiled columns, and a little fountain out front on the cobbles. It still looks like a building drawn by a child who got the budget.

What you can do

Look at it, which costs nothing. The best spot is the small square on Löwengasse. Weekday mornings are quietest; by midday in summer the pavement fills with groups.

Opposite, the Hundertwasser Village is a former tyre workshop rebuilt in 1990 and 1991 in the same style. It's free to walk through and holds shops, a café-bar and a little courtyard.

For the actual art, walk five minutes to the Kunst Haus Wien on Untere Weißgerberstraße. It reopened in February 2024 after a refit that cut its energy use by about 75% with a hydrothermal system, and it holds about 170 Hundertwasser works, the largest permanent collection of his art. It's a paid museum, so check prices on its site.

Why it still draws

The block was a provocation when it opened, the city's housing department letting an eccentric painter loose on public flats. Forty years on, it's one of Vienna's most popular sights, and the rents are still municipal.

That's the best argument for it. Look up while you're there. Somebody's watering the trees.