The tram ride around the Ringstrasse, the circular road that runs around Vienna’s Innere Stadt, is one of the world’s cheapest and most useful sightseeing trips. The Austrian capital is made up of several concentric rings, and, rather like a psychoanalyst’s diagram of the ego (a subject central to Freud, probably the city’s most famous son), the 25-minute journey around its most important loop helps, well, get your head around it.
The Ringstrasse, opened in 1865 (ringstrasse2015.info), is 150 years old this year. Its construction, ordered by Franz Joseph I, necessitated the demolition of many much older buildings, its broad path mirroring the rise of democracy and showcasing the interests of the growing bourgeoisie. It's now accepted as the site of many of the city's cultural highlights: grand, Gothic municipal buildings, palaces with hundreds of rooms, museum complexes so imposing they themselves look like palaces, modern art galleries with world-class collections so big they seem to spill out into other galleries and museums; monuments; and parks. Each section has its own name: Parkring, Burgring, Universitätsring, Schottenring, Kärntner Ring.
The whole of Vienna's old centre, including the Ringstrasse, is now a Unesco World Heritage Site. My trip begins at Am Hof, the city's oldest square, where the stately, century-old Bank of Austria building has been converted into the Park Hyatt Vienna. It's owned by Signa, Austria's largest real estate conglomerate, and virtually no expense has been spared in the four-year process, which included a new roof, reconstructing most of the interior, earthquake-proofing and lifting up the entire building using hydraulic jacks to raise the ceiling height in the two-storey basement Arany Spa (spa-arany.com), built into the bank's large old vault (the three-tonne steel door has been incorporated as a design feature).
Harking back to the inflated days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Arany being Hungarian for gold), the spa offers six treatment rooms and a 15-metre swimming pool with gold leaf tiles. In a copper mosaic and mother-of-pearl suite, I have an hour-long massage by an extraordinarily intuitive woman called Maria from Costa Rica (from €115; Dh480) before returning to my room in a glass lift, fitted into the centre of the staircase, with the original metal banisters encasing it.
My fourth-floor room, which boasts parquet flooring and a bathroom of Iranian onyx, has the quiet feel of a private studio and looks across a pedestrianised street at some luxurious old apartment conversions. The buildings date from 1870 to 1920 and, after a period of decline, are now highly sought-after. Some of them are sprouting fantastical turrets; I open the windows to let in fresh air and the sounds of the street below.
The hotel’s main restaurant, Bank, is in the property’s most impressive room, an art nouveau cashier’s hall on the ground floor. It’s clad generously in Greek marble, with an alabaster ceiling and no shortage of crystal lamps. Off to one side is the Pearl bar, with a set of mirrored glass stairs inspired by Coco Chanel; next to that is a wood-panelled cigar lounge. I find the best food is in the comfortable but less striking Lounge – the squash toast with ricotta and chilli (€6; Dh25), and very good Wiener schnitzel served with cranberry compote and potatoes rather than the usual salad and potatoes (€22; Dh92) were fast favourites.
There's much to see on the hotel's doorstep: a gorgeously cosy warren of sloped, cobbled streets behind the hotel to the right, and, to the left, the newly revamped Goldenes Quartier, or "Golden Quarter" (goldenesquartier.at/en.html), which comprises two whole sections of property owned by Sigma. I head down the newly pedestrianised Bognergasse; right and left are Chanel, Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton; behind the hotel on Seitzergasse are Prada, Mulberry, Roberto Cavalli and dozens of other designer shops. Parallel to here, on Tuchlauben, is Fabio's (fabios.at), a fabulously chic Italian restaurant with great food; opposite, a block of the apartments above Louis Vuitton, with preserved facades but highly stylised interiors, are selling for up to €10 million (Dh41.8m) each; the penthouses have beautiful views all the way down Kohlmarkt to the imperial palace. The area is smart but somewhat sterile. Some locals complain that it has been robbed of its charm, as many owners of some of the oldest and most elegant shops could not afford rising rents, or sold out to cash in on rising property prices in the centre. Others point out that this has enabled the upgrade and restoration of the buildings.
I walk along Graben, a street whose name means "ditch" and which – though it seems incredible today – was once a moat for a Roman military camp; before that, there was a Celtic settlement here. I wander south towards the Albertina museum, passing baroque statues and groups on Mozart tours with guides explaining how he died aged 35 after being treated for tuberculosis with lead, which poisoned him. There are dozens of high-end antiques and interiors shops, including the glassware company Lobmeyr (lobmeyr.at), which has made chandeliers for mosques in Medina and Mecca, among other distinctive works.
I stop at Cafe Tirolerhof on Führichgasse for a caffeine fix: of more than 800 coffee shops in the city, this is one of 150 “classic” coffeehouses, with 1920s decor, marble-top tables and staff dressed in black-and-white uniforms. There’s no Wi-Fi or music, just talking, reading and thinking. I order a Wiener Melange (the closest traditional places come to a cappuccino), which comes on a tray with a glass of water. Chandeliers hang from ceilings and cakes are stacked in slim cabinets. The bill is €4 (Dh17). There’s no pressure to leave, but my time is short, so I’ve narrowed down my museum visits to just a couple of stops.
Though many years ago, I've visited the formidable Kunsthistorisches Museum on the Ringstrasse previously, so this time my focus is the much more manageable Albertina (albertina.at). Situated opposite the startlingly grand State Opera House in an old palace, it's one of Europe's best art galleries.
Though beautiful, the 21 Habsburg Staterooms (access is included on a €11.90 [Dh50] day pass) are a sideshow to the art, which comprises an impressive permanent collection of fine art, ranging from French impressionists to photography, and exhibitions, which when I visit is From Earth to Sky, a world-class retrospective of Joan Miró, presented with full English explanations and a variety of works that put the bleak Miró Foundation in Barcelona to shame. Many scholars visit the Albertina for its works on paper – it holds some 500,000 drawings and close to 900,000 graphics.
My head full of vivid colours and surrealist thoughts, I march north, past the Hofburg Palace and Spanish Riding School, briefly going inside the Looshaus, a 1911 modernist building with a still-working bank inside. There's more banking history just around the corner at the Italianate Palais Daun-Kinsky (palaisevents.at), which opened in 1716 and boasts an exquisite staircase and dozens of rooms with original frescoed ceilings. Its main hall was Austria's first stock exchange but languished during the 1960s and 70s (at one time apparently being used as a basketball hall) until it was acquired and refurbished by a company owned by 97-year-old Karl Wlaschek, an Austrian self-made billionaire who initially made his fortune developing a chain of supermarkets, before selling and reinvesting in property.
Another of the company's acquisitions is the nearby Café Central (palaisevents.at/en/cafecentral), first opened in 1876 and one of the city's oldest operating coffee shops. Trading heavily on once having served the likes of Kokoschka, Freud and Trotsky, today it lacks much of an intellectual atmosphere (always difficult with large numbers of tourists) but the interior has been largely preserved. The Klare Rindsuppe, a clear beef soup with chopped lovage pancakes, is surprisingly delicious (two course menus from €10.5; Dh44); there's also a gorgeous cake selection and live piano music every day from 5pm.
For dinner, I head east across the old town to the Palais Coburg (palais-coburg.com), where there are two excellent restaurants, the two Michelin-starred Silvio Nickol and the less formal Clementine im Glashaus, which "creatively reinterprets traditional meals" in a glasshouse overlooking the palace's pretty garden. The menu explains how Princess Clementine d'Orleans, "a woman of formidable beauty and accomplishments", was the first resident of the palace from 1850 onwards, together with her husband Prince August von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha ("Her mission? Enjoyment!"). We sit under her portrait, which hangs in the restaurant, and order a two-course meal (prices from €10 [Dh42] for starters and €18 [Dh75] for mains). First there's fresh bread with mountains of salty whipped butter, a frothy pumpkin soup, fresh trout with seasonal vegetables and a plate of sweet potato, tomato and avocado – delicious and presented with such colour and insouciant decadence that you want to order it again.
My last day, a Saturday, is spent mostly outside the centre, west of the MuseumsQuartier in the newly trendy 6th and 7th district shopping streets around Neubaugasse metro station, north and south of Mariahilferstrasse, the city's longest shopping street and home to mainstream brands. Off this main strip there are fashion boutiques, interior design stores, music shops and, around Spittelberg, lovely old cafes and restaurants (for a personal shopping tour, see (shoppingwithlucie.com). I finish off at the Naschmarkt (wienernaschmarkt.eu), where 120 stalls and restaurants sell deli items, local products and mostly takeaway food. A large slice of feta cheese borek keeps the cold at bay while I wander around the adjoining flea market, stacked with piles of household junk. Much of it looks collectable and ironically, among piles of old watches, cameras, magazines and crockery, some eastern European gypsies are selling Nazi propaganda from the 1930s.
As I head back to my hotel across town, crossing the Ringstrasse with hundreds of tourists, I’m struck by how the strange fabric of this city reflects in some way its many complex layers of identity – geographical and cultural uncertainty, grandeur and impotence. These often mixed feelings are reflected back in the enormous weight of Austrian art and literature and even, it seems, in the people you see on the street – from middle-aged local women in twinsets and pearls displaying all the snobbery and hauteur of the previous century, and the reaction to that and today’s marked wealth gap: young students embodying some of the most countercultural looks I’ve ever seen.
As a visitor, perhaps the most you can do is embrace it, going in the same day from the Hofburg Palace (hofburg-wien.at) to the museum of modern art, Mumok (mumok.at), your head reeling, in one sense, and on the other, revelling in how easily the tourist can slice through all of this, like a knife cutting through Sachertorte, soft piano music lilting in the background.
