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.
Given the city's twentieth-century history, it's hardly
surprising that the Viennese are as keen as anyone to continue
plugging the good old days. The visual scars from this turbulent
history are comparatively light - even Hitler's sinister wartime
Flacktürme (anti-aircraft towers) are confined to the
suburbs - though the destruction of the city's enormous Jewish
community, the driving force behind the city's fin-de-siècle
culture, is a wound that has proved harder to heal. The city has
struggled since to live up to the glorious achievements of its
past, and has failed to shake off a reputation for xenophobia. Yet
for all its problems, Vienna is still an inspiring city to visit,
with one of the world's greatest art collections in the
Kunsthistorisches Museum , world-class orchestras and a
superb architectural heritage. It's also an eminently civilized
place, clean, safe (for the most part) and peopled by citizens who
do their best to live up to their reputation for
Gemütlichkeit , or "cosiness". And despite its ageing
population, it's also a city with a lively nightlife, with plenty
of late-opening Musikcafés and drinking holes. Even Vienna's
restaurants, long famous for quantity over quality, have discovered
more innovative ways of cooking and are now supplemented by a wide
range of ethnic restaurants.
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.