Vienna

Why go

An imperial capital at rest — fifty million subjects were governed from one ring of palaces. The end of that empire, in art — Klimt, Schiele, Freud, Loos and Schoenberg within a decade of each other. Music as infrastructure — two opera houses, the Philharmoniker, and a concert calendar that never stops. The coffee house — a UNESCO-listed institution where one melange rents a table for the afternoon.

The character

Vienna ran a multinational empire of fifty million people from a compact centre, and the Ringstrasse tells you how it ended. In 1857 Franz Joseph ordered the city walls demolished and replaced with a boulevard lined by an opera house, a parliament, a university, a city hall and two museums — the bourgeoisie's institutions occupying the ground the army had held. Within fifty years the empire was gone.

The extraordinary thing is what the same city produced as it dissolved. Between about 1897 and 1918 Vienna gave the world Klimt and the Secession, Schiele, Freud's psychoanalysis, Loos's argument that ornament was a crime, Mahler at the opera, Schoenberg's abandonment of tonality and Wittgenstein's first philosophy — a concentration of new thinking that no city has matched since. Modern Vienna lives comfortably with both inheritances: it is formal, quiet, well-run and consistently rated the world's most liveable city, and the tension between the imperial surface and the radical century underneath is the whole reason to come.

Places of character

Kunsthistorisches Museum — the Habsburg collection, with the largest Bruegel holding anywhere in one room. Secession Building — Olbrich's 1898 "golden cabbage", with Klimt's Beethoven Frieze in the basement. Loos Bar — a marble and mahogany room of 1908, twenty-seven square metres, and an argument about modernism you can drink in. Zentralfriedhof — Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Strauss in one plot; the cemetery is larger than the first district. Karl-Marx-Hof — a kilometre-long social housing block from Red Vienna in the 1920s, still lived in. Café Sperl or Café Prückel — thonet chairs, newspapers on rods, and no expectation that you will leave.

The way to do it

Take the Habsburg morning and the modernist afternoon; the two halves explain each other. Buy standing-room tickets at the Staatsoper for a few euros and go for one act if a full evening is too much. Use the coffee house as a workplace. And walk the Ring once at night, when the buildings are lit and empty.

One perfect day

Breakfast in a coffee house with the papers, unhurried, because that is the correct way to start here. The Kunsthistorisches at opening for the Bruegel room, then across the Ring to the Secession for the Beethoven Frieze. Lunch of Tafelspitz somewhere old-fashioned. Afternoon at the Leopold for Schiele, or the tram out to Karl-Marx-Hof if the twentieth century is more interesting than the nineteenth. Coffee and cake at four. Standing room at the opera at seven, one act or three. Late dinner at a Beisl, and a last walk past the lit Rathaus.

Grand hotels

Hotel Sacher — 1876 behind the opera, with the torte, the red velvet and a guest list from Kennedy to Queen Elizabeth. Hotel Imperial — a converted 1863 palace on the Ring, where Wagner stayed and the Habsburgs housed state guests.

When to go

Best expression: late September to November — concert season opening, clear cold light, no crowds. Consider: Advent, for the Christmas markets and the ball season starting in January. Avoid if possible: July and August, when the opera closes and the city is humid and half-empty.

The frame

Ideal stay 4 nights · Minimum 3 nights · Best arrival by train from Munich, Prague or Budapest · Airport VIE, 18 km · Walkability excellent, with trams on the Ring · Best without a car yes