St Anne’s Church, Vienna

St Anne's Church, Vienna tickets: which one to buy

The church is free to enter and there is no ticket; the money here changes hands for concerts. Classical and Christmas concerts are staged in the nave several evenings a week by commercial promoters, in period costume for the tourist programmes and plainly for the others, and prices vary widely by seat; the acoustics of this small baroque box are good and an unamplified quartet carries well. Guided tours of the inner city pass the door and rarely go in.

The church stands on Annagasse, a quiet lane off the Kaerntner Strasse, two minutes from the opera and the Stephansdom, which makes it the easiest of detours. Nothing needs booking except concerts. The relic of St Anne's hand is displayed once a year on 26 July, her feast day, and that is the one date worth planning around. Promoters sell the same concerts at the door and online at different prices, and the cheapest seats at the back still hear everything in a room this size.

Visiting St Anne's Church, Vienna: what to see

A chapel stood here from 1320 and the Gothic church was consecrated on St Anne's day in 1518. The Jesuits took it over in 1629 and began turning it baroque; after a fire in 1747 Christoph Tausch, a pupil of Andrea Pozzo, rebuilt the interior using the trompe l'oeil techniques his master had made famous, painting architecture that is not there onto flat and curved surfaces so convincingly that the eye keeps correcting itself. Daniel Gran painted the three ceiling frescoes and the high altarpiece between 1747 and 1751.

The carved group of St Anne with the Virgin and the Christ Child dates from about 1510 and is attributed to Veit Stoss, the sculptor of the great altarpiece in Krakow. The organ by Johann Hencke is eighteenth century. The church has belonged to the Oblates of St Francis de Sales since 1906 and is a working parish rather than a museum. The side altarpieces are by Kremser Schmidt, the most prolific Austrian painter of the late eighteenth century, and the chapel of St Francis Xavier keeps its original frescoes.

St Anne's Church, Vienna opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from morning to early evening, with a break in the middle of the day on some days and closure during mass. The church is small and rarely holds more than a handful of visitors, which is its charm in a city where the major churches are full. The frescoes are lit by side windows and read best in the early afternoon. Concert evenings change the atmosphere completely and the church is then closed to casual visitors.

Vienna's Christmas markets fill the streets nearby in December. Dress modestly, with shoulders covered. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow twenty minutes, longer if you sit down and let the ceiling work on you. The Kaerntner Strasse crowds are a few metres away and this lane is the quickest escape from them. The lane outside is one of the few quiet streets in the first district and has a handful of old-fashioned shops selling church supplies and sheet music.