A performance in a seat, booked in advance. The full experience, priced accordingly, and the way to see the house working as intended.

A performance in standing room, bought on the day for a very small sum. The best value in European culture, with caveats covered below.

A guided tour, which runs on days and at times when the stage is free, and takes you through the auditorium, the foyers, the tea room and backstage areas.

The three are entirely different visits. A tour is not a performance, and a standing ticket is not a seat.

What you should not do is turn up expecting to walk in and look around. This is a working opera house, not a monument, and there is no casual access.

The thing to know about the Vienna Opera, and reviewers explain it in detail.

A set number of standing places are released shortly before each performance — typically around ninety minutes ahead — and sold from a dedicated standing room entrance on the side of the building rather than the main box office.

The price is a fraction of a seated ticket, in the region of a cheap lunch.

Places are allocated rather than free-for-all, but arriving early gets you closer to the front. The queue forms well before release, and in peak season people join it a long time ahead.

The practical convention: bring a scarf. Standing places have a rail, and tying a scarf to your spot reserves it while you move around during intervals. This is genuinely how it works.

The caveats: sightlines vary considerably and some positions see very little of the stage, and it is crowded. For an unfamiliar opera of several hours, standing is a commitment.

Seated tickets go on sale well in advance through the opera’s own box office and website, and popular productions and star casts sell out.

Prices span a very wide range from modest upper-level seats to expensive stalls, so an ordinary budget is not excluded.

Sightlines vary by position and the seating plan matters — some cheaper seats have restricted views, and this is stated at booking.

Seats carry small screens with surtitles in several languages, which transforms an unfamiliar work.

Dress is smart but not formal. Visitors worry about this more than they need to; a jacket or a dress is ample and nobody is turned away for less.

Runs most days at set times, scheduled around rehearsals and performances, and lasts around forty minutes.

It takes you into the auditorium, the grand staircase, the marble hall, the tea room and parts of the backstage machinery, with commentary on the building’s history and its wartime destruction and reconstruction.

Opinion divides. Many find it a good way to see a great building. A minority find it rushed, crowded and less interesting than expected.

Times are posted daily and change, so check on the day rather than assuming a schedule.

If you can attend a performance instead, do that. The tour is the fallback for a day with no show or for anyone who does not want to sit through an opera.

Important for planning. The opera season runs roughly from autumn to early summer, and the house goes dark for the summer break.

Visitors arriving in July and August find no performances at all, and only the guided tour available. Several reviews record exactly that disappointment.

If seeing a performance matters to you, check the season calendar before fixing your Vienna dates.

In the summer months the opera screens recorded performances free on a large screen on the square outside, which is a genuine consolation and a pleasant way to spend a warm evening.

The ball season in winter is another matter entirely, when the auditorium is converted for the Opera Ball and normal performances pause briefly.

The first of the great Ringstrasse buildings, opened in the 1860s, largely destroyed in the war and rebuilt.

The surviving original sections — the grand staircase, the Schwind foyer, the tea room — are the most ornate parts and are the highlight of the tour. The auditorium itself is the postwar reconstruction and is comparatively restrained.

From outside, the building anchors the Ringstrasse and is worth walking around. It is floodlit at night.

The square in front is where the costumed concert ticket sellers work, which is covered below.

Even without going in, the exterior and the evening crowd on a performance night are worth ten minutes.

Worth a warning, because they cluster around this building.

People in period costume and wigs sell tickets to classical concerts on the streets around the opera and the cathedral. These are not tickets to the State Opera. They are for tourist-oriented concerts in other venues, of variable quality.

Some of these operations are legitimate and some are not, and the price bears little relation to the product.

If you want the State Opera, buy from the State Opera — its own box office, its own website, or the standing room window on the day.

If you want a Mozart-in-costume concert, that is a perfectly enjoyable evening, but book it from a venue or an established seller rather than from someone on a street corner.

Forty minutes for the guided tour.

Two to four hours for a performance depending on the work, plus intervals.

Add an hour before a standing performance for the queue, and more in peak season.

Ten minutes to walk around the outside.

An opera evening effectively fills the evening. Plan dinner before rather than after, since Vienna’s kitchens close earlier than visitors expect.

By season: autumn through spring for performances, with the house dark in high summer.

December is the busiest month for visitors generally, and the opera is part of that.

July and August are the quietest for the building and the emptiest of actual opera.

For the tour, morning slots are generally less crowded.

For standing room, arrive early — the difference between joining the queue two hours before and thirty minutes before is the difference between seeing the stage and seeing a pillar.

On the Ringstrasse at Karlsplatz, a walk of five minutes from St Stephen’s and two from the Albertina.

Its own underground station is directly beneath, and trams stop outside.

The standing room entrance is on the side of the building rather than the main front, which catches people out — look for the sign and expect a queue there rather than at the main doors.

The main entrance is used for seated ticket holders and for tours.

After an evening performance the area is busy and taxis are in demand; the underground runs late.

The opera house has accessible entrances, lift access and wheelchair spaces in the auditorium, bookable in advance through the box office.

Assistance should be arranged when booking rather than on the night.

The guided tour is generally accessible, though backstage sections may vary — check when booking.

Standing room is not a realistic option for anyone who cannot stand for several hours.

Accessible toilets are provided, and the surrounding streets and the underground station have lift access.

The reviews are overwhelmingly positive, and the disappointments cluster in two places: people who arrived in summer to find no performances, and people whose standing places had poor views.

The frustrating version: come in August, find the house dark, take a rushed tour among sixty people, and leave feeling you saw a corridor.

The good version: check the season, buy a standing ticket on the day, join the queue early with a scarf in your pocket, get a place with a sightline, and watch a world-class company for the price of a sandwich.

Few great cultural institutions anywhere are this accessible to someone on a budget. That is the story of this building, and it is worth planning a day around.