This is the thing to understand first. The Hofburg is a palace complex of many wings and courtyards containing a dozen separate attractions, each with its own ticket and its own entrance.

Under the name you will find: the Imperial Apartments, the Sisi Museum and the Silver Collection, sold together as one visit; the Imperial Treasury; the Spanish Riding School; the Austrian National Library’s State Hall; the Neue Burg museums of arms, instruments and ephesus; the Albertina, in an adjoining wing; and the offices of the Austrian president.

So a ticket to the Hofburg does not exist. A ticket to a specific part of it does.

Walking through the courtyards and the passages costs nothing, and is worth doing in its own right — the scale of the complex is the point, and it is best appreciated on foot from the outside.

The standard visit, and what most people mean when they say they are doing the Hofburg.

One ticket covers three things in sequence: the Silver Collection, an enormous display of imperial tableware and porcelain; the Sisi Museum, on the life of Empress Elisabeth; and the Imperial Apartments, the living and working rooms of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth.

An audio guide is included and is well regarded — visitors describe it as informative without being overwhelming.

The route is one way and takes around ninety minutes.

The Silver Collection comes first and is longer than people expect. If your interest is the apartments, pace yourself through the porcelain rather than exhausting your attention on it.

Empress Elisabeth dominates this visit, and she dominates Austrian tourism generally.

The museum covers her life: the reluctant empress, the obsessive regimes of exercise and appearance, the travelling, the estrangement from court life, and the assassination in Geneva.

It is better than the gift-shop version of her suggests, and it makes a deliberate effort to separate the historical woman from the romantic film image.

One practical warning that recurs in visitor accounts: if you are also visiting Schönbrunn, there is significant overlap in the Sisi material. Doing both back to back produces a sense of repetition.

If you are choosing one imperial residence, the Hofburg is the working seat of power and Schönbrunn is the summer palace with the gardens. Doing both is fine; doing both in one day is a lot of the same story.

A separate ticket in a different part of the complex, and one of the strongest things in Vienna.

It holds the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian imperial crown, coronation regalia, the ceremonial robes, and objects including a narwhal tusk long believed to be a unicorn horn.

Visitors who make the effort rate it very highly, and it is markedly less crowded than the apartments.

It is reached through a different courtyard from the Imperial Apartments, which is why many people miss it entirely.

If you have time for two things in the Hofburg complex, make it the apartments and the treasury.

Several more, each ticketed separately.

The Spanish Riding School, where the Lipizzaner horses train and perform. Morning training sessions are cheaper than performances and give you the horses in the baroque hall.

The State Hall of the Austrian National Library, a baroque library interior that is among the most photographed rooms in Europe.

The Albertina, in an adjoining wing, with a major collection of graphic art and modern painting.

The Neue Burg museums — historic instruments, arms and armour, and the Ephesos collection — often combined with a Kunsthistorisches ticket.

A chapel where the Vienna Boys’ Choir sings at Sunday mass.

None of these are included with the apartments ticket.

Buy for the specific attractions you want rather than looking for an all-inclusive Hofburg ticket, which does not exist.

The Sisi Ticket combines the Imperial Apartments with Schönbrunn’s state rooms and the Imperial Furniture Museum, and it is good value if you are doing all three — with the caveat that the furniture museum closes one day a week, which has caught visitors out.

Combination tickets link the Treasury with the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Vienna city passes bundle several.

Booking ahead is sensible in summer and December but queues are usually shorter here than at Schönbrunn.

Prices change periodically, so check the official site rather than any figure quoted elsewhere.

Ninety minutes to two hours for the Imperial Apartments, Sisi Museum and Silver Collection together.

An hour for the Treasury.

An hour for the State Hall of the library.

Morning training at the riding school runs to about an hour; performances longer.

So a full Hofburg day is possible but it is really several separate visits in one complex. Two attractions plus a walk through the courtyards is a comfortable half day.

Add time to find the right entrance. The complex is large and confusing, and the entrances for different attractions are in different courtyards.

First slot of the morning for the apartments, before the coach groups arrive. Visitors specifically note that groups with audio guides bunch up in the darker corridors and make the route slow.

The Treasury is rarely crowded at any hour.

Morning training at the riding school is early and needs planning around.

The courtyards are worth walking at any time and are particularly good early or after dark, when they are lit and empty.

Midday through mid-afternoon is the busiest window across the complex.

August, June, July and September are the busiest, with December close behind — a flatter distribution than most Vienna sites because this is largely an indoor visit.

February, March and January are the quietest.

Winter suits the Hofburg. This was the winter palace, the interiors are heavy and warm, and the courtyards under snow are exactly the setting the building was built for.

The riding school schedule varies through the year with the horses’ summer break, so check before planning around it.

The Hofburg occupies a large site at the western edge of the historic centre, a walk of five to ten minutes from St Stephen’s.

Underground and tram stops surround it and it is impossible to miss.

The difficulty is not reaching the complex but finding the right door once you are in it. The Imperial Apartments entrance is in one courtyard, the Treasury in another, the library elsewhere again, and the signage is not generous.

Check which courtyard and which entrance your ticket specifies before you set off, and allow ten minutes to find it.

The entrance to the Imperial Apartments is opposite the Spanish Riding School, which is a useful landmark.

Photography is restricted in parts of the complex, and in the Imperial Apartments in particular. Expect to be told and comply.

The courtyards, the exteriors and the passages are free to photograph and are where the best architectural shots are.

The Treasury and the library State Hall have their own rules — check at the entrance.

The complex includes working government offices and an active chapel, so parts are closed to visitors entirely.

Bag storage is required for larger bags at the museum entrances.

The main visitor attractions have lift access and step-free routes, with accessible toilets and reduced admission for visitors with disabilities and a companion.

The complex itself is the challenge: it is large, the courtyards are cobbled in places, and moving between attractions involves a walk across uneven ground.

The Imperial Apartments route is one way and can be congested, which is a barrier in its own right.

Contact the relevant museum in advance rather than the Hofburg generally, since each is administered separately.

An early slot makes the apartments route considerably easier to navigate.

The confusion in the reviews is almost entirely about what is included in what, and the disappointment is almost entirely about Sisi repetition.

The frustrating version: buy a ticket without knowing what it covers, spend forty minutes in a porcelain collection you did not want, hear the same Sisi material you heard at Schönbrunn yesterday, and never find the Treasury.

The good version: walk the courtyards first to grasp the scale, do the Imperial Apartments early with the audio guide, cross to the Treasury for the crowns, and add the library State Hall if the baroque appeals.

This was the centre of European power for six hundred years and the complex still reads as one. Pick your two or three parts deliberately and it is one of the best half days in Vienna.