Josefstadt Vienna
Behind the Town Hall, where the Friedrich Schmidt Platz stands with its heavy and not very attractive eclectic buildings, lies the Josefstadt, one of the most charming suburbs of Vienna which in recent years has taken on a new lease of life as a home for many of the artistic and more creative elements of the city.
The Florianigasse leads between cafes into the heart of this area. As well as several small antique shops, the road boasts a fine Italian res¬taurant, known as Scarabocchio. At the corner of the Schlosselgasse stands the house where Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of Mozart's Die Zauberjlijte, died.
Past the public baths of the Langegasse is the Piaristengasse, full of small shops and tailors. The street itself has a striking surprise in the form of the rather unattractively named Jodok Fink Platz, which none the less is one of the most charming squares in the city. It is dominated by the impressive Baroque Piaristen (Maria Treu) church which was designed by Hildebrandt in the late 1680s but completed by Mathias Gerl almost a century later. Its remarkable plan, spatially one of the most daring in the city, would seem to have been inspired by Borromini's Sant' Agnese in Rome. The space wanders out of every corner in a quite un-Viennese way.
Continuing along the street, No. 41 is as forbidding a Ringstrasse palais as any to be found in the city, while No. 27, one of the last town Heurigens offers a delightful if unassuming garden in which to enjoy a glass of wine during the early evening. To the left under an arch stands the English theatre, with its prim but elegant turn-of-the¬century interior, while to the right the Rotenhof offers more Teutonic entertainment, being the home of one of the famous Burschenschaften, or pan-German student clubs, whose members to this day carry sabres with which to inflict on each other the requisite marks of so-called manliness and comradeship. Even in a street lined with Biedermeier houses and trees, the sight of these weapons hanging on the walls inside causes a frisson of unease to Anglo-Saxon sensibilities.
The Lerchenfelderstrasse offers a pleasing vista of towers and one very exciting twenties building. Across down the undistinguished Kel¬lermanngasse is the Neustiftgasse, with its buildings by Otto Wagner on the right.
To the left, across the Neustiftgasse, however, is the charming St Ulrichs Platz, with the Cafe Nepomuk, a modern but attractive resting place. The entire square is unearthly in its abandoned but picturesque state. The church is relatively undistinguished late Baroque, but the house at No.2, dating from the mid-1700s, is a not-to-be-missed gem with a courtyard and chapel.
The Burggasse Vienna
The Burggasse opposite the church's west entrance is a long road offering a fine view of the centre of the city and its cathedral spire. Following the road down and taking the Spittelberggasse on the right, we shall soon reach the cobbled streets of a quarter which, if not quite in the Josefstadt, possesses a no less engaging urban ensemble. Here there are many beer houses and small restaurants sandwiched among the houses. At the far end lies the Siebensterngasse, with its Baroque inns, dominated by the vast flak towers erected under the 'thousand-year Reich' to defend the city from allied bombing in the Second World War. From here a tram or a brisk five-minute walk will bring us back to the Ring and the city centre.
Schonbrunn Vienna
From the underground station of the Josefstiidterstrasse, behind the Rathaus, a train will take us to another delightful suburb of the city:
Hietzing and the exquisite park of Schonbrunn. Alighting at Schon brunn, take the first entrance to the park, which stretches from here to the next station, Hietzing. The park, which covers 197 hectares, is laid out in the French eighteenth-century style, with formal hedges and dramatic vistas enlivened by the usual architectural fripperies of the age. In a delightful temple-like house hidden among the trees, an old lady offers glasses of water from a centuries-old spring.
Behind some other bushes is an unpretentious restaurant, while nearby at the end of one vista there seems to rise from the ground a Piranesian pile of columns and en tablatures. Farther on, a large basin with Neptunes, sea-horses and Tritons contains a pair of suitably dramatic fountains.
But the most interesting construction in the park is the Gloriette, which sits grandly on a hill overlooking the palace. It is a dull but useful building, offering from its roof exquisite views of Vienna, views which have not changed that much since the days when Napoleon, who made Schonbrunn his headquarters in 18°9, looked out from the very same spot. As in the Belvedere and parts of the Hofburg, there is an inevitable scattering of sculptured headless warriors commemorating imaginary feats of arms. Even in the summer, the park can seem quite empty towards sunset, and the Gloriette, designed by Hohenburg in 1775, loses its classical coolness, becoming bathed in a rich golden light.
The actual palace, whose origins go back to the fourteenth century, is best seen from here. Although only part of Fischer von Erlach's gran¬diose plans were realized, the Seven Years War interrupted his scheme to turn this into a grander palace than Versailles and much was altered by Pacassi in the 1740s, its pleasing yellow faryade is impressive under a summer sky. Close to, the detailing is rather tacky and the disastrous colour scheme of the garden flowers and yellow garden facade does not help. The interior of the palace is one of the disappointments of Central Europe. Of the 1,441 rooms, only a handful are shown, and few of these are either well decorated or possess any grandeur. Of historical value only is the extraordinary Empire Roomin which Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, died.
The former stables nearby contain a modest collection of carriages, while the road facade of the palace has two obelisks crowned by Napo¬leonic eagles placed there during his brief stay and never removed by the Habsburgs.
A walk across the garden brings us to Hietzing. This western part of the park contains a menagerie, the zoological gardens and the botanical gardens, with a monumental but rather inelegant palm house rarely open to the public. Most of the lawns, despite their somewhat rough surface, are not to be walked on, but on summer afternoons the keepers who are supposed to enforce this petty rule rarely exert themselves and the Rasen can be trod with impunity.
Leaving the Schlosspark at the western gate we come to the Hietzing village square, with its statue of Maximilian of Mexico and its Gothic church. At the start of a woody avenue the Auhofstrasse is the finest cafe in all Vienna, perhaps in all Europe: Dommayers. Dommayers deserves this accolade not so much because it was the favourite haunt of Johann Strauss or because its interior is light, unstuffy and bustling with elegance and English newspapers but because it combines these things with food of considerable quality.
To breakfast here on ham and eggs or on the superb joghurts with hot blackcurrants is a delight. True, the service may seem a little aged, but patience is nowhere better rewarded in Vienna than in this establishment. The garden in summer is another agreeable feature of the cafe.
The Vienna Cheap Car hire for Airports
The evening dealt with in so civilized a manner, it only remains to cross the Danube Canal to discover a part of Vienna which offers considerable attraction at night, the famous Prater, with its giant wheel so brilliantly filmed in 1949 in the The Third Man. It can easily be reached by the underground. The square we emerge from is dominated by the imposing Tegetthoff monument, dedicated to the naval hero of Lissa.Before embarking on any of the entertainments the Prater offers, we must of course first pay homage to the 'Big Wheel', the symbol of the park and as much an association with the Austrian capital as any waltz by Strauss. It was designed by a British engineer called Walter Basset, who in the 1880s, after service in the Royal Navy, designed a number of wheels for fairgrounds in Europe. This one was almost identical to one in Paris and another in Blackpool and is the only survivor of the three.
Badly damaged in the last war, it has been restored to its former glory. A touching if somewhat faded exhibition of photographs portrays its creator, resplendent in full-dress naval uniform, and the various stages of its construction, as well as predictably a couple of stills from the film which immortalized the wheel.
Equally inevitable, given that we are in Vienna, is the pace of the machine. But on an autumnal afternoon, there is no better way of escaping the high facades of the old city than to rise slowly above the richly coloured chestnuts of the Prater Hauptallee. All the green so sadly absent in the city is revealed before our eyes, the formal planning of the chestnut avenues cutting lines into the far distance.
Compared to this, the more conventional fare of ghost trains, miniature railway, helter-skelters etc. seem an anti-climax, although the tall Danube Tower nearby offers the very sixties thrill of a revolving restaurant.
Excursions from Vienna
After touring the capital, you can explore the picturesque environs of Vienna. All the following excursions take a full day and are best undertaken in favourable weather.
The Vienna Woods and Baden
As most guides quite rightly point out, no tour of Vienna is complete without a visit to a Heurigen, one of the inns in the Vienna Woods selling the young and somewhat astringent local Heurige white wine, which customers invariably dilute with soda water. The food at these establish¬ments is often first-class, especially the bread and Liptauer orange¬-coloured cheese, but in recent years many have become tourist traps which the more discerning traveller should try to avoid. Grinzing and Kahlenberg, the two most traditional locations for Heurigens, are now almost entirely filled with coachloads of tourists, although during the winter a visit to Reblaus in Grinzing still provides an opportunity to savour something of the old Heurigen atmosphere.
A far better idea is to take the tram to Potzleinsdorf and the bus then to Neustift-am-Walde and walk along the Agnesweg over the hill to Sievering, a delightfully unspoilt village which contains several ex¬cellent Heurigen, of which Agnes is perhaps the most renowned. The delightful Biedermeier houses which make up upper and lower Sievering repay considerable study and so far its leafy calm has not been spoilt by buses of American or Italian tourists 'doing' a Heurigen under the super¬vision of some hapless girl attired in a dirndl.
To enjoy the Vienna Woods fully, however, it is essential to go farther afield and take a train from the Siidbahnhof to either Modling or Baden.
Modling Village Austria
Modling is a village just on the edge of the Vienna Woods over¬looking the Danube plain towards Hungary. Its town museum is full of nostalgic photographs of the remarkable railway which used to run from here across the valley to Hinterbriihl. Although the town has been done up recently with rather excessive zeal, especially as regards the posi¬tioning of nineteenth-century lanterns, there are several medieval buildings. Along the main road past the museum towards the church are some with frescoed faiYades.
At the time of the Turkish wars, Modling suffered terribly. The entire population was put to the sword, a tragedy recorded by numerous memorial stones to the left of the church on the hill. Although a Rom¬anesque chapel nearby contains several fragments of frescoes, the church itself has lost much of its atmosphere because of an over-enthusiastic restoration programme.
From this church a path winds round to the left towards a fine old viaduct which once carried the railway to Vorderbriihl. It then descends between dramatic rocks, crosses the road and soon ascends to the ruined castle of Modling, with its extensive views across the country. A further path leads along the so-called Drei Stunden Weg (Three Hours' Path), a delightful walk which can be easily accomplished in far less time, to the Husaren temple. This temple, with its Neo-Classical columns, is a kind of miniature Austrian Valhalla erected by Prince Liechtenstein as a tomb for the seven hussars who died saving his life from an attack of French cavalry during the battle of Aspern It is a bleak, windy place, hauntingly beautiful in autumn. Returning to Modling, just before we reach the town, a path to the right, described as the Beethoven Wanderweg, eventually comes to Baden; but for those who are already exhausted by walking, a train from Modling will convey them to that town after a cake at one of Modling's fine cafes or a meal at one of the many Italian restaurants in the centre.
The Florianigasse leads between cafes into the heart of this area. As well as several small antique shops, the road boasts a fine Italian res¬taurant, known as Scarabocchio. At the corner of the Schlosselgasse stands the house where Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of Mozart's Die Zauberjlijte, died.
Past the public baths of the Langegasse is the Piaristengasse, full of small shops and tailors. The street itself has a striking surprise in the form of the rather unattractively named Jodok Fink Platz, which none the less is one of the most charming squares in the city. It is dominated by the impressive Baroque Piaristen (Maria Treu) church which was designed by Hildebrandt in the late 1680s but completed by Mathias Gerl almost a century later. Its remarkable plan, spatially one of the most daring in the city, would seem to have been inspired by Borromini's Sant' Agnese in Rome. The space wanders out of every corner in a quite un-Viennese way.
Continuing along the street, No. 41 is as forbidding a Ringstrasse palais as any to be found in the city, while No. 27, one of the last town Heurigens offers a delightful if unassuming garden in which to enjoy a glass of wine during the early evening. To the left under an arch stands the English theatre, with its prim but elegant turn-of-the¬century interior, while to the right the Rotenhof offers more Teutonic entertainment, being the home of one of the famous Burschenschaften, or pan-German student clubs, whose members to this day carry sabres with which to inflict on each other the requisite marks of so-called manliness and comradeship. Even in a street lined with Biedermeier houses and trees, the sight of these weapons hanging on the walls inside causes a frisson of unease to Anglo-Saxon sensibilities.
The Lerchenfelderstrasse offers a pleasing vista of towers and one very exciting twenties building. Across down the undistinguished Kel¬lermanngasse is the Neustiftgasse, with its buildings by Otto Wagner on the right.
To the left, across the Neustiftgasse, however, is the charming St Ulrichs Platz, with the Cafe Nepomuk, a modern but attractive resting place. The entire square is unearthly in its abandoned but picturesque state. The church is relatively undistinguished late Baroque, but the house at No.2, dating from the mid-1700s, is a not-to-be-missed gem with a courtyard and chapel.
The Burggasse Vienna
The Burggasse opposite the church's west entrance is a long road offering a fine view of the centre of the city and its cathedral spire. Following the road down and taking the Spittelberggasse on the right, we shall soon reach the cobbled streets of a quarter which, if not quite in the Josefstadt, possesses a no less engaging urban ensemble. Here there are many beer houses and small restaurants sandwiched among the houses. At the far end lies the Siebensterngasse, with its Baroque inns, dominated by the vast flak towers erected under the 'thousand-year Reich' to defend the city from allied bombing in the Second World War. From here a tram or a brisk five-minute walk will bring us back to the Ring and the city centre.
Schonbrunn Vienna
From the underground station of the Josefstiidterstrasse, behind the Rathaus, a train will take us to another delightful suburb of the city:
Hietzing and the exquisite park of Schonbrunn. Alighting at Schon brunn, take the first entrance to the park, which stretches from here to the next station, Hietzing. The park, which covers 197 hectares, is laid out in the French eighteenth-century style, with formal hedges and dramatic vistas enlivened by the usual architectural fripperies of the age. In a delightful temple-like house hidden among the trees, an old lady offers glasses of water from a centuries-old spring.
Behind some other bushes is an unpretentious restaurant, while nearby at the end of one vista there seems to rise from the ground a Piranesian pile of columns and en tablatures. Farther on, a large basin with Neptunes, sea-horses and Tritons contains a pair of suitably dramatic fountains.
But the most interesting construction in the park is the Gloriette, which sits grandly on a hill overlooking the palace. It is a dull but useful building, offering from its roof exquisite views of Vienna, views which have not changed that much since the days when Napoleon, who made Schonbrunn his headquarters in 18°9, looked out from the very same spot. As in the Belvedere and parts of the Hofburg, there is an inevitable scattering of sculptured headless warriors commemorating imaginary feats of arms. Even in the summer, the park can seem quite empty towards sunset, and the Gloriette, designed by Hohenburg in 1775, loses its classical coolness, becoming bathed in a rich golden light.
The actual palace, whose origins go back to the fourteenth century, is best seen from here. Although only part of Fischer von Erlach's gran¬diose plans were realized, the Seven Years War interrupted his scheme to turn this into a grander palace than Versailles and much was altered by Pacassi in the 1740s, its pleasing yellow faryade is impressive under a summer sky. Close to, the detailing is rather tacky and the disastrous colour scheme of the garden flowers and yellow garden facade does not help. The interior of the palace is one of the disappointments of Central Europe. Of the 1,441 rooms, only a handful are shown, and few of these are either well decorated or possess any grandeur. Of historical value only is the extraordinary Empire Roomin which Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, died.
The former stables nearby contain a modest collection of carriages, while the road facade of the palace has two obelisks crowned by Napo¬leonic eagles placed there during his brief stay and never removed by the Habsburgs.
A walk across the garden brings us to Hietzing. This western part of the park contains a menagerie, the zoological gardens and the botanical gardens, with a monumental but rather inelegant palm house rarely open to the public. Most of the lawns, despite their somewhat rough surface, are not to be walked on, but on summer afternoons the keepers who are supposed to enforce this petty rule rarely exert themselves and the Rasen can be trod with impunity.
Leaving the Schlosspark at the western gate we come to the Hietzing village square, with its statue of Maximilian of Mexico and its Gothic church. At the start of a woody avenue the Auhofstrasse is the finest cafe in all Vienna, perhaps in all Europe: Dommayers. Dommayers deserves this accolade not so much because it was the favourite haunt of Johann Strauss or because its interior is light, unstuffy and bustling with elegance and English newspapers but because it combines these things with food of considerable quality.
To breakfast here on ham and eggs or on the superb joghurts with hot blackcurrants is a delight. True, the service may seem a little aged, but patience is nowhere better rewarded in Vienna than in this establishment. The garden in summer is another agreeable feature of the cafe.
The Vienna Cheap Car hire for Airports
The evening dealt with in so civilized a manner, it only remains to cross the Danube Canal to discover a part of Vienna which offers considerable attraction at night, the famous Prater, with its giant wheel so brilliantly filmed in 1949 in the The Third Man. It can easily be reached by the underground. The square we emerge from is dominated by the imposing Tegetthoff monument, dedicated to the naval hero of Lissa.Before embarking on any of the entertainments the Prater offers, we must of course first pay homage to the 'Big Wheel', the symbol of the park and as much an association with the Austrian capital as any waltz by Strauss. It was designed by a British engineer called Walter Basset, who in the 1880s, after service in the Royal Navy, designed a number of wheels for fairgrounds in Europe. This one was almost identical to one in Paris and another in Blackpool and is the only survivor of the three.
Badly damaged in the last war, it has been restored to its former glory. A touching if somewhat faded exhibition of photographs portrays its creator, resplendent in full-dress naval uniform, and the various stages of its construction, as well as predictably a couple of stills from the film which immortalized the wheel.
Equally inevitable, given that we are in Vienna, is the pace of the machine. But on an autumnal afternoon, there is no better way of escaping the high facades of the old city than to rise slowly above the richly coloured chestnuts of the Prater Hauptallee. All the green so sadly absent in the city is revealed before our eyes, the formal planning of the chestnut avenues cutting lines into the far distance.
Compared to this, the more conventional fare of ghost trains, miniature railway, helter-skelters etc. seem an anti-climax, although the tall Danube Tower nearby offers the very sixties thrill of a revolving restaurant.
Excursions from Vienna
After touring the capital, you can explore the picturesque environs of Vienna. All the following excursions take a full day and are best undertaken in favourable weather.
The Vienna Woods and Baden
As most guides quite rightly point out, no tour of Vienna is complete without a visit to a Heurigen, one of the inns in the Vienna Woods selling the young and somewhat astringent local Heurige white wine, which customers invariably dilute with soda water. The food at these establish¬ments is often first-class, especially the bread and Liptauer orange¬-coloured cheese, but in recent years many have become tourist traps which the more discerning traveller should try to avoid. Grinzing and Kahlenberg, the two most traditional locations for Heurigens, are now almost entirely filled with coachloads of tourists, although during the winter a visit to Reblaus in Grinzing still provides an opportunity to savour something of the old Heurigen atmosphere.
A far better idea is to take the tram to Potzleinsdorf and the bus then to Neustift-am-Walde and walk along the Agnesweg over the hill to Sievering, a delightfully unspoilt village which contains several ex¬cellent Heurigen, of which Agnes is perhaps the most renowned. The delightful Biedermeier houses which make up upper and lower Sievering repay considerable study and so far its leafy calm has not been spoilt by buses of American or Italian tourists 'doing' a Heurigen under the super¬vision of some hapless girl attired in a dirndl.
To enjoy the Vienna Woods fully, however, it is essential to go farther afield and take a train from the Siidbahnhof to either Modling or Baden.
Modling Village Austria
Modling is a village just on the edge of the Vienna Woods over¬looking the Danube plain towards Hungary. Its town museum is full of nostalgic photographs of the remarkable railway which used to run from here across the valley to Hinterbriihl. Although the town has been done up recently with rather excessive zeal, especially as regards the posi¬tioning of nineteenth-century lanterns, there are several medieval buildings. Along the main road past the museum towards the church are some with frescoed faiYades.
At the time of the Turkish wars, Modling suffered terribly. The entire population was put to the sword, a tragedy recorded by numerous memorial stones to the left of the church on the hill. Although a Rom¬anesque chapel nearby contains several fragments of frescoes, the church itself has lost much of its atmosphere because of an over-enthusiastic restoration programme.
From this church a path winds round to the left towards a fine old viaduct which once carried the railway to Vorderbriihl. It then descends between dramatic rocks, crosses the road and soon ascends to the ruined castle of Modling, with its extensive views across the country. A further path leads along the so-called Drei Stunden Weg (Three Hours' Path), a delightful walk which can be easily accomplished in far less time, to the Husaren temple. This temple, with its Neo-Classical columns, is a kind of miniature Austrian Valhalla erected by Prince Liechtenstein as a tomb for the seven hussars who died saving his life from an attack of French cavalry during the battle of Aspern It is a bleak, windy place, hauntingly beautiful in autumn. Returning to Modling, just before we reach the town, a path to the right, described as the Beethoven Wanderweg, eventually comes to Baden; but for those who are already exhausted by walking, a train from Modling will convey them to that town after a cake at one of Modling's fine cafes or a meal at one of the many Italian restaurants in the centre.
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