Vienna ist eine wunderbare, romantische Stadt voller Kunst und das ideale Ziel für ein Wochenende voller Schönheit. Jede Ecke der Altstadt ist bezaubernd und deshalb reicht es, abgesehen von den berühmtesten Sehenswürdigkeiten, einfach nur sich umzuschauen, um Augen und Geist zu erfreuen.
Ein paar Tage in Wien zu verbringen, auch nur ein Wochenende, ist eine angenehme Möglichkeit, abzuschalten. Um es in vollen Zügen zu genießen, braucht man nur zwei Dinge: ein Hotel im Zentrum zu buchen, möglichst im Innere Stadt, und bequeme Schuhe zu tragen, denn Wien ermöglicht es, sehr viel zu Fuß zu sehen, ohne lange und ermüdende Fahrten.
If you have never been to Vienna, you cannot miss its main monuments, the St. Stephen’s Cathedral and the Hofburg.
St. Stephen
St. Stephen has medieval origins and its Gothic forms are clearly visible on the outside. Its roof, characterized by zigzag patterns of colored tiles, is one of the city’s landmarks. The interior decoration has had successive layers and is predominantly Baroque. Just outside the Cathedral, at the beginning of the elegant Graben, stands the Pestsaule, a monumental column commemorating the victims of the plague of 1679.
Hofburg: the winter palace of the Habsburgs
The Hofburg is the winter palace of the Habsburgs. Visiting it is essential to learn more about the lives of the legendary Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth of Bavaria, better known as Sissi. The tour begins with the Sissi Museum, where clothes, jewelry, and writings belonging to the empress are displayed, and then leads us into the imperial apartments. Next to the representative rooms, including the beautiful dining room set as for an official banquet, are the more intimate chambers, such as Franz Joseph’s study and Sissi’s bedroom.
A curiosity: the empress was a great health enthusiast, so her room is equipped with gym equipment for daily exercises. Inside the Hofburg, it is possible to further deepen your knowledge of the imperial world with a visit to the silver collection, the State Library, and the Spanish Riding School, where the beautiful white Lipizzaner horses are trained.
The Ring is the ring of roads that follows the perimeter of the medieval fortifications. It encloses the Innere Stadt, literally “inner city”, the oldest core of the city. A walk along the five kilometers of the Ring boulevards allows you to admire numerous monuments and relax in the greenery of the various adjacent parks.
Starting from the Schottenring, at the corner with the Danube bank, you encounter the Stock Exchange building. Founded by Empress Maria Theresa in 1771, the Vienna Stock Exchange is one of the oldest in the world. At the corner with Universitätsring the Votivkirche, a neo-Gothic church erected by Archduke Maximilian as an ex-voto for the failure of the assassination attempt on his brother Franz Joseph, stands out. Inside there is a four-meter high candle that could remain lit perpetually for one hundred years.
The next boulevard, the Universitätsring, owes its name to the presence of the main headquarters of the University of Vienna. Continuing you find the Rathaus, the neo-Gothic town hall, in front of which the Christmas market takes place in December. Opposite the Rathaus is the Burgtheater, the most important theater in the city after the Staatsoper. The ceiling of the grand staircase is frescoed by Gustav Klimt who, together with his brother Ernst and Franz Matsch, at the beginning of his career had earned a solid reputation as a painter of interiors of monumental public buildings.
Continuing along the Doktor Karl Renner Ring you can admire the neoclassical seat of Parliament, while on the opposite side you can relax in the Volksgarten, a public park opened in the nineteenth century.
Burgring
The Burgring is one of the most majestic sections of the Ring: on the right you can admire the two twin buildings of the museums at Maria Theresien Platz, while on the opposite side opens the square of Heldenplatz with the buildings of the Hofburg followed, in the Opernring, by the Burgarten, a park characterized by a large Art Nouveau greenhouse. The visitor has no rest because immediately after the majestic facade of the Vienna State Opera, one of the most important opera houses in the world, impresses his gaze.
Kärtner Ring
Along the Kärtner Ring some of the city’s historic luxury hotels follow one another, while to the right of the entire Parkring extends the Stadt Park, crossed by a canal fed by the Danube. The final boulevard of the Ring, the Stubenring, is dedicated to the applied arts. On it, in fact, faces the University of Applied Arts, but above all the MAK, Museum für angewandte Kunst, with its precious collections of furniture, furnishings and textiles from the Middle Ages to the present day.
The boulevard that closes the Ring along the Danube is the Franz Joseph Kai. You can choose to walk it or enter here into the Wolfgang Schmitz Promenade, the pedestrian walkway along the river.
Just beyond the Ring, but still within walking distance, there are other places worth a visit. Just outside the Opernring you can easily reach the Secession, the pavilion created by the representatives of the eponymous artistic movement to exhibit their works. Inside is the Beethoven Frieze, created by Gustav Klimt as a visual accompaniment to the Ninth Symphony by the great German composer.
Just beyond lies the Karlsplatz, characterized by the beautiful baroque Karlskirche, and surrounded by important monuments and museums such as the Kunsthalle, the Albertina Modern, and the Wien Museum, not to mention the Musikverein, the music association whose theater hosts every year the famous New Year’s Concert.
Continuing beyond Karlsplatz you reach the Belvedere, the baroque imperial palace that houses a beautiful art collection, whose highlight is the collection of Klimt‘s paintings, the most important in the world, including The Kiss and Judith.
If you don’t want to miss visiting at least one museum, Vienna offers plenty of choices. The MAK and the Belvedere have already been mentioned. In Maria Theresien Platz, two large twin buildings respectively house the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Naturhistorisches Museum. Both founded by Franz Joseph, the first is dedicated to the history of art, from antiquity to the twentieth century, and is organized into five areas: Egyptian-Oriental antiquities, classical antiquities, Kunstkammer (art objects), painting gallery, and numismatics. Here too, the frescoes of the main staircase are by the Klimt brothers and Franz Matsch. The Naturhistorisches Museum is dedicated to natural history and hosts, among others, the Venus of Willendorf, a mother goddess created about 25,000 years ago.
The Albertina is the museum created based on the duke Albert’s collection of graphic works. Its collection, which recently added a photographic section, is so extensive that most of the works are displayed in rotation, often in thematic exhibitions. Recently, twenty rooms of the original residence have been restored and opened.
Just outside the Ring, the Museums Quartier has recently been created, where the Leopold Museum stands out, with its collection of twentieth-century Viennese artists, including a large selection of works by Egon Schiele, and the Mumok, the Museum of Contemporary Art focused on twentieth-century artistic movements.
Those who love smaller and more specialized museums will not be disappointed either. I like to highlight the Museum of Papyrus, unique in its kind, where, among other things, it is possible to admire a very rare Greek musical score of a chorus from Euripides’ Orestes.
A pleasant weekend can also include some shopping and time spent at the table. The elegant shopping streets of Vienna are mainly those near the Cathedral: Kartner Strasse, the Graben and Kohlmarkt. Just outside the Ring, starting from the Museums Quartier, there is the Mariahilfer Strasse, where you can find the most common names in high street fashion.
Among the most typical products of Vienna are the precious Augarten porcelain and chocolate and sweets. Vienna has a genuine cafe culture and you cannot miss this experience. One of the best Viennese Cafes is the Cafe Central, in the elegant Palais Ferstel. You can also taste the national cake, the Sacher, in the place where it was born, the Cafe of the Hotel Sacher, near the Opera Theater.
As for the cuisine, the most Viennese dish of all is the Wiener Schnitzel, a fried escalope similar to our Milanese style. Also very popular are Tafelspitz, beef cooked in wine with spices and vegetables, and dishes of Hungarian origin, such as goulash. These are true culinary cornerstones that can be enjoyed everywhere without ever being disappointed by the results.
