City Guide - Vienna

Most people visit Vienna with a vivid image of the city in their minds: a monumental vision of Habsburg palaces, trotting white horses, old ladies in fur coats and mountains of fat cream cakes. And they're unlikely to be disappointed, for the city positively feeds off imperial nostalgia -

High Baroque churches and aristocratic mansions pepper the Innere Stadt, monumental projects from the late nineteenth century line the Ringstrasse, and postcards of the Emperor Franz-Josef and his beautiful wife Elisabeth still sell by the sackful. Just as compelling as the old Habsburg stand-bys are the wonderful Jugendstil and early Modernist buildings, products of the era of Freud, Klimt, Schiele, Mahler and Schönberg, when the city's famous coffeehouses were filled with intellectuals from every corner of the empire. Without doubt, this was Vienna's golden age, after which all has been decline: with the end of the empire in 1918, the city was reduced from a metropolis of over two million, capital of a vast empire of fifty million, to one of barely more than 1.5 million and federal capital of a small country of just eight million souls.

Most first-time visitors spend the majority of their time in Vienna's central district, the Innere Stadt . Retaining much of its labyrinthine street layout, it's the city's main commercial district, packed with shops, cafés and restaurants. The chief sight here is the Stephansdom , Vienna's finest Gothic edifice, standing at the district's pedestrianized centre. Tucked into the southwest corner of the Innere Stadt is the Hofburg , the former imperial palace and seat of the Habsburgs, now housing a whole host of museums, the best of which is the Schatzkammer, home to the crown jewels.

The old fortifications enclosing the Innere Stadt were torn down in 1857, and over the next three decades gradually replaced by a showpiece boulevard called the Ringstrasse . Nowadays, the Ringstrasse is used and abused by cars and buses as a ring road, though it's still punctuated with the most grandiose public buildings of late-imperial Vienna, one of which is home to the city's new cultural centre, the Museumsquartier , and another of which houses the famous Kunsthistorisches Museum . Beyond the Ringstrasse lie Vienna's seven Vorstädte , or inner suburbs, whose outer boundary is marked by the traffic-clogged Gürtel (literally "belt"), or ring road. The highlight out here is the Belvedere , where you can see a wealth of paintings by Austria's pre-eminent trio of modern artists - Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka - followed by the Prater , east of the Danube Canal, with its famous Ferris wheel and funfair. On the whole, there's little reason to venture beyond the Gürtel into the Vororte , or outer suburbs, except to visit Schönbrunn , the Habsburgs' former summer residence, a masterpiece of Rococo excess and an absolute must if only for the wonderful gardens.

For all its grandiosity, Vienna is surprisingly compact: the centre is just a kilometre across at its broadest point, and you can travel from one side of the city to the other by public transport in less than thirty minutes. Although the Danube is crucial to Vienna's identity, most visitors see very little of the river, whose main arm flows through the outer suburbs to the northeast of the centre.

It's almost as difficult to avoid images of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) in Vienna as it is in his home town of Salzburg. For it was in Vienna that Mozart spent the last decade of his life, during which he composed nearly all his most famous works. Mozart moved to Vienna in March 1781 after a summons from his employer, the irascible Archbishop of Salzburg, Count Colloredo, who was visiting his sick father in the city. Within three months Mozart had resigned from his post as court organist to the archbishop, or "arch-oaf" ( Erzlümmel ) as he called him in his letters, causing a rift with his overbearing father, who was assistant Kapellmeister in Salzburg. The relationship was further strained when Mozart, against his father's wishes, moved in with the all-female Weber family, and grew particularly attached to one of the daughters, Constanze. In August 1782 Mozart eventually married the 19-year-old Constanze in the Stephansdom. Their union appears to have been happy, despite most biographers' misogynist attacks on Constanze as unworthy of his genius. Mozart himself hated to be parted from her, if his letters - "I kiss and squeeze you 1,095,060,437,082 times" - and the fact that he rarely left her side, are anything to go by.

Vienna's Innere Stadt is best explored on foot, but for covering larger distances you'll need to use the enviable public transport system , known as the Wiener Linien ( www.wienerlinien.co.at ). Predictably enough, the trams and buses are punctual and the ever-expanding U-Bahn clean and very quick. The whole system runs from between 5 and 6am to between midnight and 1am. The only way of getting home in the small hours is to catch one of the NightLine night buses . These run every thirty minutes from 12.30am to 4am, and all 22 routes pass through Schwedenplatz at some point. Taxis are plentiful and fairly reliable too, with the minimum charge around öS25/?1.82, followed by an extra öS10/?0.73 or so per kilometre or couple of minutes. You can't flag down a taxi, but you can catch a cab at one of the taxi ranks around town, or phone 31330, 40100 or 60160. The most expensive way to get about, of course, is by Fiaker , one of the horse-drawn carriages driven by bowler-hatted, multilingual coachmen. There are Fiaker ranks at Stephansplatz, Heldenplatz, Michaelerplatz and Albertinaplatz. It's best to settle on the price and duration of your ride beforehand; the going rate is öS500/?36.34 for twenty minutes, or öS800/?58.14 for forty minutes.

More so than anywhere else in Austria, Vienna has a huge variety of places to eat and drink , from Beisln , the Viennese version of a local pub, to upmarket restaurants, as well as a wide range of cuisines, from Balkan to South American. Even the country's ubiquitous protein-heavy food is given a new lift in the capital thanks to the popularity of Neu Wiener Küche , the Viennese version of nouvelle cuisine , which uses fresh produce to give a slightly Mediterranean bent to traditional dishes.

Vienna is, of course, also home of the Kaffeehaus , and has by far the largest selection in the country. While the rest of the world queues up for fast food, the Viennese Kaffeehaus implores you to slow down; as the sign in one such café says, "sorry, we do not cater for people in a hurry." For the price of a small coffee, you can sit for as long as you like without being asked to move on or buy another drink. Understandably, then, the price of this first drink is astronomical and will regularly set you back around öS35/?2.54.

Eating and drinking establishments are divided into Kaffeehäuser , incorporating snack bars and Kaffee-Konditorei, and restaurants , which includes some of the city's Beisln . Phone numbers have been given only for those restaurants where it's advisable to book a table . Don't get too excited by those places that boast a Schanigarten , as this is rarely much of a garden; simply a few tables alfresco. For more pleasant, atmospheric alfresco eating and drinking, you need to head off to one of the simple Heurigen in the wine-making suburbs.

Most people visit Vienna with a vivid image of the city in their minds: a monumental vision of Habsburg palaces, trotting white horses, old ladies in fur coats and mountains of fat cream cakes. And they're unlikely to be disappointed, for the city positively feeds off imperial nostalgia -

High Baroque churches and aristocratic mansions pepper the Innere Stadt, monumental projects from the late nineteenth century line the Ringstrasse, and postcards of the Emperor Franz-Josef and his beautiful wife Elisabeth still sell by the sackful. Just as compelling as the old Habsburg stand-bys are the wonderful Jugendstil and early Modernist buildings, products of the era of Freud, Klimt, Schiele, Mahler and Schönberg, when the city's famous coffeehouses were filled with intellectuals from every corner of the empire. Without doubt, this was Vienna's golden age, after which all has been decline: with the end of the empire in 1918, the city was reduced from a metropolis of over two million, capital of a vast empire of fifty million, to one of barely more than 1.5 million and federal capital of a small country of just eight million souls.

Most first-time visitors spend the majority of their time in Vienna's central district, the Innere Stadt . Retaining much of its labyrinthine street layout, it's the city's main commercial district, packed with shops, cafés and restaurants. The chief sight here is the Stephansdom , Vienna's finest Gothic edifice, standing at the district's pedestrianized centre. Tucked into the southwest corner of the Innere Stadt is the Hofburg , the former imperial palace and seat of the Habsburgs, now housing a whole host of museums, the best of which is the Schatzkammer, home to the crown jewels.

The old fortifications enclosing the Innere Stadt were torn down in 1857, and over the next three decades gradually replaced by a showpiece boulevard called the Ringstrasse . Nowadays, the Ringstrasse is used and abused by cars and buses as a ring road, though it's still punctuated with the most grandiose public buildings of late-imperial Vienna, one of which is home to the city's new cultural centre, the Museumsquartier , and another of which houses the famous Kunsthistorisches Museum . Beyond the Ringstrasse lie Vienna's seven Vorstädte , or inner suburbs, whose outer boundary is marked by the traffic-clogged Gürtel (literally "belt"), or ring road. The highlight out here is the Belvedere , where you can see a wealth of paintings by Austria's pre-eminent trio of modern artists - Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka - followed by the Prater , east of the Danube Canal, with its famous Ferris wheel and funfair. On the whole, there's little reason to venture beyond the Gürtel into the Vororte , or outer suburbs, except to visit Schönbrunn , the Habsburgs' former summer residence, a masterpiece of Rococo excess and an absolute must if only for the wonderful gardens.

For all its grandiosity, Vienna is surprisingly compact: the centre is just a kilometre across at its broadest point, and you can travel from one side of the city to the other by public transport in less than thirty minutes. Although the Danube is crucial to Vienna's identity, most visitors see very little of the river, whose main arm flows through the outer suburbs to the northeast of the centre.

It's almost as difficult to avoid images of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) in Vienna as it is in his home town of Salzburg. For it was in Vienna that Mozart spent the last decade of his life, during which he composed nearly all his most famous works. Mozart moved to Vienna in March 1781 after a summons from his employer, the irascible Archbishop of Salzburg, Count Colloredo, who was visiting his sick father in the city. Within three months Mozart had resigned from his post as court organist to the archbishop, or "arch-oaf" ( Erzlümmel ) as he called him in his letters, causing a rift with his overbearing father, who was assistant Kapellmeister in Salzburg. The relationship was further strained when Mozart, against his father's wishes, moved in with the all-female Weber family, and grew particularly attached to one of the daughters, Constanze. In August 1782 Mozart eventually married the 19-year-old Constanze in the Stephansdom. Their union appears to have been happy, despite most biographers' misogynist attacks on Constanze as unworthy of his genius. Mozart himself hated to be parted from her, if his letters - "I kiss and squeeze you 1,095,060,437,082 times" - and the fact that he rarely left her side, are anything to go by.

Vienna's Innere Stadt is best explored on foot, but for covering larger distances you'll need to use the enviable public transport system , known as the Wiener Linien ( www.wienerlinien.co.at ). Predictably enough, the trams and buses are punctual and the ever-expanding U-Bahn clean and very quick. The whole system runs from between 5 and 6am to between midnight and 1am. The only way of getting home in the small hours is to catch one of the NightLine night buses . These run every thirty minutes from 12.30am to 4am, and all 22 routes pass through Schwedenplatz at some point. Taxis are plentiful and fairly reliable too, with the minimum charge around öS25/?1.82, followed by an extra öS10/?0.73 or so per kilometre or couple of minutes. You can't flag down a taxi, but you can catch a cab at one of the taxi ranks around town, or phone 31330, 40100 or 60160. The most expensive way to get about, of course, is by Fiaker , one of the horse-drawn carriages driven by bowler-hatted, multilingual coachmen. There are Fiaker ranks at Stephansplatz, Heldenplatz, Michaelerplatz and Albertinaplatz. It's best to settle on the price and duration of your ride beforehand; the going rate is öS500/?36.34 for twenty minutes, or öS800/?58.14 for forty minutes.

More on Page 2