The Desert House is located in the glass-and-steel Art Nouveau hothouse built in 1904 by Emperor Franz Joseph I to house his vast collection of rare tropical plants and sits next to the main entrance to the Schönbrunn Zoo. Visit the Desert House with a Vienna Pass or Flexipass to avoid the line at the ticket window, or as part of a hop-on-hop-off bus tour to take in the city's major landmarks without getting footsore.
Divided into four sections—Northern Africa and the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, and Madagascar—the habitat is nome to a North American blacktail rattlesnake, radiated tortoise from Madagascar, and Welwitschia tree from the Namibian desert, which has long, droopy fronds and grows in an untidy heap along the ground; it can live for up to 1,500 years.