• – The restaurants and coffeehouses with illustrated, laminated menus are generally-speaking a main attraction for mass tourism and therefore offer food and other services on an according level.
• – Some restaurants in Vienna are so unique that they cannot be appraised properly with just toques or stars. A big part of their allure is their blend of hedonism and cultural history.

Let’s concentrate on the latter phenomena.

When were you last in a restaurant that was first mentioned in documents fifty years before the discovery of America and has been in the same place ever since? Or in the one where Ludwig van Beethoven regularly ordered his indispensable dose of red wine and coffee? This restaurant is much younger than the one mentioned first, but is nonetheless still over 400 years old.

In Vienna everyone knows where Empress Elisabeth ordered her favorite dessert. It is a place where guests are still waited on in the same manner as during her time. So it is not just an empty phrase that for over 200 years now every guest is spoken to and treated like a king or a queen.

Ultimately we need not focus only on restaurants steeped in history like the ones Mozart, Strauss, Beethoven, Empress Elisabeth and Emperor Franz Joseph or Mark Twain frequented with pleasure. In Vienna, today’s gourmets do not necessarily need to eat in restaurants that are centuries old in order to experience how extraordinary Vienna’s cuisine can be. In fifty years one restaurant managed to achieve what the others had hundreds of years to do. But even their tradition is not put into question.

Griechenbeisl

The first mention of the Griechenbeisl is in a document from 1447. From around 1500 the present Griechenbeisl was called The Yellow Eagle . Over the years the building appears in chronicles as an inn with the names Red Roof , Golden Angel and Reichenberger Beisl . In the mid-17th century Greek and Levantine merchants settled near the meat market and the area became to be known as the Greek Quarter. Thus the inn got the name it carries today, which means Greek Tavern.

Griechenbeisl

Some of the most famous guests include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Richard Wagner, Johann Strauss, Johannes Brahms and Mark Twain.

Griechenbeisl

Address: Fleischmarkt 11, Vienna

Public transport: Underground: U1, U4 Schwedenplatz

Opening hours : daily 11 am – 12.30 am

Kitchen hours: daily 11 am – 11.30 pm

Closed: December 24

Zum Schwarzen Kameel

In 1618 Johann Baptist Cameel bought the building that already then was steeped in tradition and opened a shop for spices. In reference to his last name he gave the store the name that it still carries today – The Black Camel.

Zum Schwarzen Kameel

Ludwig van Beethoven regularly drank red wine at the Kameel . For eight years he lived in the Pasqualati-Haus on the Molkerbastei, very near to the restaurant.

Zum Schwarzen Kameel

Address: Bognergasse 5, Vienna

Public transport: Underground U2 Schottentor

Opening hours

Daily 8.30 am – 12 pm

Kitchen hours: daily 12 am – 02 pm and 08 pm -10.30 pm

Closed: Sunday and public holidays

Plachutta

There are probably only a few things in the world that the directors Woody Allen, George Lucas and Wim Wenders, the actors Bette Midler and John Malkovich, or the singers Tom Jones and Placido Domingo agree on, but one of them is the Tafelspitz that is served at the restaurant Plachutta. This boiled beef dish is still prepared the same way that Emperor Franz Joseph I had invented it.

Plachutta

Plachutta

Address: Wollzeile 38, Vienna

Public transport: Underground U3 Stubentor

Opening hours

Daily 11.30 am – 12 pm

Kitchen hours: daily 11.30 am – 11.15 pm

Cafe Sperl

Cafe Sperl is a traditional Wiener Kaffeehaus or Viennese coffeehouse. It is on the Austrian Register of Historic Places and since 2011 the part of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage – the “Viennese Coffeehouse Culture”.

With parquet floors, Thonet chairs, marble tables and crystal chandeliers, the interior design of this coffeehouse is manifestly reminiscent of Vienna’s elegant RingstraBen-Cafes. Before the World War I, this was the preferred coffeehouse of Gustav Klimt, Joseph Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, Joseph Maria Olbrich and most likely jung Adolf Hitler.

Not without reason, Cafe Sperl is recognized as the Viennese coffeehouse in many movies. Like for example in the romantic love story Before Sunrise (1995) or in the more recent historical drama about the relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud – A Dangerous Method (2011).

Cafe Sperl

Address: Gumpendorfer StraBe 11, Vienna

Public transport: Underground U2 MuseumsQuartier

Opening hours

Mon – Sat 07 am – 11 pm

Sun 11 am – 08 pm

Demel

The k.u.k. Hofzuckerbackerei Demel, the Imperial and Royal Court Confectionery Bakery, is located at Kohlmarkt 14, right before the Michaelerplatz.

This bakery is where Empress Elisabeth ordered sweets to accompany her morning coffee, for court festivities, imperial birthdays and the annual Kaiserball (Imperial Ball). Her favorite dessert was a sorbet made out of violet blossom extract, spun sugar and a few drops of champagne. The violet sorbet is still served at Demel today. Emperor Franz Joseph I on the other hand only ever wanted to eat the carnival doughnuts from Demel.

The Royal Court Confectionery Bakery Demel

Back in the day the waitresses were recruited from convent schools and called Demelinerinnen . The Demelinerinnen have always and still today address the guests with the impersonal construction: “Has the lady already made a selection?” That was the way, during the time of the monarchy, one addressed aristocrats without being too personal and offending them.

Demel

Address: Kohlmarkt 14, Vienna

Public transport: Underground U3 Herrengasse

Opening hours

Daily 09 am – 09 pm

Sacher

As long as you are in Vienna and want to try the Original Sacher-Torte there is no better place for it than in the Cafe Sacher in the Hotel Sacher. The Original Sacher-Torte that is served there is handmade in the in-house Sacher patisserie. In one of the finest coffeehouses in Vienna they serve a variety of coffee specialties that wonderfully complement the Sacher-Torte.

Hotel Sacher

A man who is considerably more famous than many of the prominent stars that have been guests at the Cafe Sacher, died in the house that once stood where the Hotel Sacher stands today. On July 28, 1741 the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi died here.

Cafe Sacher

Address: PhilharmonikerstraBe 4, Vienna

Public transport: Underground: U1, U2, U4 Karlsplatz

Opening hours

Daily 08 am – 12 pm

Kitchen hours: until 11.30 pm

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St. Stephen’s Cathedral

Antonio Vivaldi, Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in St. Stephen’s Cathedral

Antonio Vivaldi² came to Vienna in hopes of attaining a position as court composer for the imperial court. Unfortunately he died shortly after his arrival in the house that once stood where the Hotel Sacher stands today. His death was documented in the registry of deaths of St. Stephen’s Cathedral on July 28, 1741. There is a plaque commemorating the greatest composer of the Baroque era at the old Vienna University of Technology on Karlsplatz. A hospital and its associated cemetery were located there during Vivaldi’s time.

Shortly before Vivaldi’s death is when Joseph Haydn³ came to Vienna as an eight-year-old and began his musical career as a choir boy in St. Stephen’s Cathedral. For nine years he sang together with his brother Michael under the altar of Vienna’s cathedral and at the same time took joy in a comprehensive musical education. In order to preserve his immaculate voice, the master of the choristers, Domkapellmeister, wanted to have Joseph Haydn castrated. Haydn’s father was able to ward off this plan in the last moment. Despite the Domkapellmeister’s plan, Joseph Haydn married in this cathedral at the age of 28.

The wedding of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart⁴ and Constanze and the baptism of two of their six children took place here. In May 1791 Mozart applied for the well-paid position of Domkapellmeister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. But on December 5, 1791 before he was able to officially take office, he died at the age of 35. On December 6 he was laid out in the Chapel of the Crucifix in the cathedral.

Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven in the Mozarthaus

At the age of 17 Ludwig van Beethoven⁵ arrived from Bonn to take private lessons from Mozart. Beethoven was requested to improvise for the Mozart. But Mozart did not believe that the young pianist was improvising freely. He was convinced that Beethoven had diligently prepared the “improvisations” and at first reacted with indifference. He then gave Beethoven a theme to improvise on that he picked himself. Undeterred, Beethoven played variations on Mozart’s theme and the Meister applauded him. Mozart was willing to immediately take on the young virtuoso as his student. But unfortunately it never came to that. Before they could begin the lessons, Beethoven had to return to Bonn to his deathly-ill mother.

Both composers, Mozart and Beethoven, were students of Haydn. Mozart wrote to his father about Haydn describing him as his “fatherly friend”.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was celebrated as a gifted artist in Vienna ever since his first performance on the piano for Empress Maria Theresa⁶ in Schonbrunn Castle.⁷ He was six years old at the time. In Vienna he very quickly made a wide range of influential friends and was asked to perform numerous concerts in the houses of the nobility.

Haydn and Beethoven in the Academy of Sciences

On March 27, 1808 there was a party to celebrate the 76th birthday of Joseph Haydn in the auditorium of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna. A celebrity all over Europe, the composer, decorated with medals and awards, was carried in on a carrying chair. Among the many guests was also Haydn’s former student Ludwig van Beethoven. This was Haydn’s last public appearance. One year later, as Vienna was being occupied by Napoleon, Joseph Haydn died.

Napoleon, who was a great admirer of Haydn, posted a guard of honor in front of the house of the dying composer in May 1809. Four years later, in December 1813, the 43-year-old Beethoven celebrated a triumphant success in the same auditorium of the Academy with a performance of his Seventh Symphony and the premiere of his orchestral work Wellington’s Victory, or, the Battle of Vitoria , in which he described Napoleon’s defeat in Spain. The composer himself conducted both pieces.

The European statesmen who had come to Vienna for the Congress of Vienna (1814) were overwhelmed by Beethoven’s music. Thus Beethoven finally achieved the international breakthrough he had always longed for.

New Castle at the Hofburg

Still today the world of sound of the composers of the First Viennese School (Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven) can be reproduced with original musical instruments of the time. The Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments is located in the New Castle⁸ of Vienna’s Hofburg.

Antonio Salieri’s greatest discovery: Franz Schubert

Antonio Salieri⁹ was not only known for his victory over Mozart in the legendary composer contest in Schonbrunn Castle. Salieri was also the most distinguished music pedagogue of his time. As the Imperial Chapel Master, he directed the Boys’ Choir at the Hofkapelle in Vienna. This is where Franz Schubert¹⁰ caught his attention.

In difference to Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven, Franz Schubert did not enjoy wide public appreciation during is short life span. Even though Salieri supported him for years due to his unique musical talent, Schubert was never able to find a publisher for his work. His attempts to find musical employment also failed. He sent his songs and compositions to the greatest idols of the time, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe und Beethoven, but that also did not further his cause.

Convinced to do so by friends, he held his only public concert on March 26, 1823, the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death. It was a great success. The concert was sold out even though on the same evening the most famous violin virtuoso of the time, Niccolo Paganini, was performing in Vienna. It was not until after this success those publishers also gained interest in his work. He died on November 19, 1823 at the age of 31. His last words were to be chiseled as an epitaph onto his gravestone: “Beethoven does not lie here.”

Franz Schubert was buried near Beethoven’s grave in the cemetery in Wahring – the 18th Viennese district. Sixty years later Schubert’s and Beethoven’s remains were moved to Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof and laid to rest next to each other.

Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert rest in the Zentralfriedhof

Not until after Schubert’s death did his numerous romantic songs become more and more popular. It still took a much longer time for his symphonies, masses and operas also to be made accessible to the public. The Eighth, so-called Unfinished Symphony did not premiere in Vienna until 1865.

Johannes Brahms as “Beethoven’s heir”

Johannes Brahms¹¹ was another admirer of Beethoven who tried to gain recognition and praise in the city that his great idol, Ludwig van Beethoven, had spent his best years in. In Vienna he felt especially close to the great Beethoven.

Johannes Brahms once wrote to a friend: “I will never compose a symphony. It is impossible to put into words how the likes of us feels when we are always hearing this giant marching behind us”. Brahms nonetheless managed to finish four symphonies. His first performance was in Vienna in 1862 and he was immediately celebrated as “Beethoven’s heir.”

Soon after, Brahms was offered the position of choir director of the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Ten years later he took over the artistic direction of the highly sought-after Vienna Philharmonic concerts. He received a place of honor in the director’s loge in the “Golden Hall” in the Musikverein. Today the second largest concert hall in the building is named after him.

Brahms and his admirer Johann Strauss II¹² were bound by a great friendship. The Waltz King dedicated his waltz “Be Embraced, You Millions!” to his friend Johannes Brahms.

Johann Strauss II and Anton Bruckner as the darlings of the imperial court

Johann Strauss II carried on the family tradition and took over his father’s orchestra. Shortly thereafter he was summoned to be the imperial and royal musical director of the Hofball / Court Ball. Consequently he was also responsible for the planning and realization of the Hofball. The Wiener Hofball still today takes place in the Hofburg even though the court as an institution no longer exists.

The undisputed father of the operetta, Jacques Offenbach, gave Johann Strauss II the idea to try composing operettas. His first operetta Indigo and the Forty Thieves successfully premiered in 1871 at the Theater an der Wien. This was a special honor for Strauss since the Theater an der Wien was where Beethoven’s opera Fidelio premiered and where the first public performances of Beethoven’s Third, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies were held.

The premiere of Die Fledermaus was in 1874. It became his most successful operetta and has been in the repertoire of the Hofoper, today’s Vienna State Opera, since 1894. Until today Die Fledermaus is the only operetta that is performed there.

Strauss’ grave is located in Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof, next to the graves of Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert.

Anton Bruckner¹³ seized the opportunity and, at the age of 44, assumed the position of court organist that had just opened up in Vienna.

Already back then he was celebrated as one of history’s greatest organists. But as a composer he first had to prove himself in Vienna. Because he dedicated his Third Symphony to Wagner, he was immediately branded as a Wagnerian by the Brahms devotees in Vienna. Because of this he had to fight for recognition in Vienna well into the second half of the 1880s.

It was not until then that Bruckner was recognized for his accomplishments as a composer by being awarded the Order of Franz Joseph from Emperor Franz Joseph I¹⁴ for his work Te Deum . In 1891 the emperor also bestowed on him the rare privilege of taken on a rent-free apartment in Belvedere Castle¹⁵ .

The Upper Belvedere

It was here that he spent the last year of his life.

Deeply committed to God and his vicarious rulers on earth, Anton Bruckner dedicated his Seventh Symphony to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, his Eighth Symphony to Emperor Franz Joseph I and his Ninth Symphony to God – “if he shall accept it”, as the composer added.

Everybody loves Gustav Mahler – Bruckner & Schoenberg as his admirers

One of Anton Bruckner’s many students was the especially gifted Gustav Mahler¹⁶ . Mahler started his musical education at the age of four and at age six he was already teaching classes himself and composing his first works.

Focusing on opera, Mahler started working as a conductor in the beginning of the 1880s. He studied the most distinguished conductors of his time at their concerts and this lead to becoming acquainted with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss. After a series of guest performances, he was summoned to Budapest in 1888 to be the director of the Royal Opera. Johannes Brahms once attended a performance of Don Giovanni in Budapest that Mahler was conducting. Brahms was very impressed with his work.

Already an accredited conductor, Mahler was offered the dream position as conductor and court opera director of the Vienna Hofoper and he accepted. He held this highly esteemed position for ten years and during this time also conducted his own works during guest performances in Saint Petersburg, Rome, Paris and Amsterdam gaining enthusiastic followers everywhere. In the United States Mahler’s symphonies were also highly regarded: He was briefly director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.

Wiener Staatsoper | Vienna State Opera

In Vienna, Gustav Mahler was friends with the artists of the Viennese Art Nouveau. He was also very close to the young and progressive composers Arnold Schonberg¹⁷ and Alban Berg.¹⁸

At the beginning of the 20th century, they formed the Second Viennese School

(Arnold Schonberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern¹⁹ ) which is considered to have influenced the development of music in Modernism.

The post FAMOUS COMPOSERS IN THEIR TOWN -WHERE HAYDN, MOZART AND BEETHOVEN MEET EACH OTHER appeared first on TravelsMaps.Com ®.

With the construction of Belvedere Castle , Prince Eugene of Savoy , the most successful military commander of his time, an ardent bibliophile and patron of the arts, left behind a spirited Baroque signature, which reaches from today’s Vienna Central Station to Vienna’s inner city. Prince Eugene of Savoy expressed all of his pride in his European heritage through the building of the Belvedere. The three great national styles of Baroque all come together harmoniously in this castle.

The park garden, created in the spirit of French Baroque, the double-winged castle built in Austrian Baroque style and the castle’s interior that was decorated by important Italian Baroque masters, are a mirror image of the man who commissioned them all. The original design envisioned the Belvedere as a garden castle. The architect Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt was commissioned by Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1714 to build the castle and he completed the Lower Belvedere just two years after the beginning of construction.

Together with his main competitor Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt executed basically all of the great public and private Viennese building projects of the time. During the reign of Maria Theresa almost all of the historical buildings of the Renaissance were destroyed and replaced with new buildings or at least completely converted to Baroque style and thus these two architects were responsible for the creation of the entire Baroque look that Vienna still today offers its visitors.

The central room of the Lower Belvedere is the Marble Hall. The ceiling fresco by Martino Altomonte shows Prince Eugene as a youthful hero and as Apollo, surrounded by Muses. To the west lies the State Bedroom and to the east the Tafelzimmer – the dining room. The ceiling frescoes in the State Bedroom with the themes The Evening and The Morning are also by Altomonte. The complementary trompe l’oeil paintings – the perspectival illusionism or the 3D painting of the Baroque era, are by Marcantonio

Chiarini und Gaetano Fanti. Only a few of the rooms of the Lower Belvedere were planned as residential rooms. Most of the space was used for the Orangery and the Castle Stables.

Prince Eugene spent his youth in the Castle of Versailles. It was there that he became familiar with the art of French Baroque gardens. He invited Dominique Girard to come to Vienna to create the garden-park for the Belvedere. Girard designed the garden complementing it with his own specialty – Jeux d’eau or water games. A fountain accentuated the slope of the garden and the mirror effect of the water basin in front of the Upper Belvedere made the whole complex seem to float weightlessly.

The natural incline of the grounds, the reason that the Upper Belvedere lies much higher than the Lower Belvedere, inspired the thematic selection of the garden sculptures: They portray the ascent from the underworld to Mount Olympus.

Five years after the completion of the Lower Belvedere, Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt created the Upper Belvedere. Like a system of individual pavilions, the building is divided into numerous blocks, each one adorned with its own roof construction. At the time of construction the reference to the empty “Turkish tents” that were left behind for Prince Eugene on the battlefields by the fleeing Turks was well understood.

The Upper Belvedere

The impressive Sala terrena on the ground floor of the Upper Belvedere was laid out as a splendid grotto. Columns in form of atlantes carry the heavy ceiling on their shoulders. A Marble Hall is also at the center of this building. It is adorned with a ceiling fresco by Carlo Innocenzo Carlone. The frescoes in the chapel are by the same artist. The altarpiece in the chapel is by Francesco Solimena.

Located around the Marble Hall are the residential rooms in which today important works of the century and the Viennese Art Nouveau are shown. Certainly the best-known part of this museum is the world’s largest collection of works by the painter Gustav Klimt.

After his death, Prince Eugene of Savoy found his last resting place in a chapel in St. Stephen’s Cathedral that was created especially for him. His heart was buried near Turin in the Basilica of Superga, which houses many of the tombs of the House of Savoy.

The heirs of the Prince sold the Belvedere castle complex to Empress Maria Theresa. The Belvedere remained in the possession of the Habsburg family and the last to live here was the heir apparent Franz Ferdinand who was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914.

The Austrian State Treaty (the act which officially ended the Allied occupation and re-established Austria as a sovereign state after World War II) was signed on May 15, 1955 in Belvedere Castle and presented to the crowds in the park by the Austrian Federal Chancellor Leopold Figl.

Oberes Belvedere | Upper Belvedere Castle

Address: Prinz Eugen-Str. 27, 1030 Vienna

Public transport: Underground: U1, U2, U4 Karlsplatz > Tram D – Schloss Belvedere

Fin de siecle and the Vienna Secession

(Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka)

Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere

Opening hours: daily 10 am to 6 pm

Unteres Belvedere und Orangerie | Lower Belvedere & Orangery

Address: Rennweg 6, 1030 Vienna

Public transport: Underground: U1, U2, U4 Karlsplatz > Tram D – Schloss

Belvedere

Opening hours

daily 10 am to 6 pm

Wednesday 10 am to 9 pm

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The entrance to the 430-year-old riding school is located in the main passageway of the Michaeler Wing of the Hofburg. The tickets for the main performance of the Spanish Riding School are sold out months in advance. Malicious tongues in Vienna joke that the ticket prices for the dance of the snow white Lipizzaner exceed the prices for a ballet in the nearby State Opera¹ several fold.

Stalburg at the Hofburg

But there are other less expensive ways to see the horses of the Spanish Riding school dance. Almost every morning between 10 am and 12 pm you can watch the horses doing their morning exercises, the so-called “Light Movements”. During these morning exercise the various lessons of the “High School of horsemanship” are perfected through persistent repetition.

For example the “pas de deux”, during which two horses carry out the exact same exercises and steps at the same time, or the “work in hand and on the long rein”, during which the communication between the rider and the horse should function perfectly even without body contact. Most spectacular are the “airs above the ground”: The training of artistic jumping maneuvers like the Levade, the Courbette and the Capriole. These classic school jumps are not trained on a daily basis though, so they cannot be seen at every morning exercise.

It is also possible to book a one-hour long tour of the Spanish Riding School, during which you will learn everything about the Baroque Winter Riding School building, the Renaissance buildings of the Stallburg and also be able to take a peek into the stables of the Lipizzaner.

Aside from the summer weeks they spend in Styria, the Lipizzaner spend their whole life in the Hofburg. Their training begins directly after they lose the black coats they have as foals and they become the unique white horses they are.

Not long ago women also gained the chance to work with possibly the noblest horses in the world: A British and an Austrian woman were qualified to be trainers for the first time in the 436-year-long history of the riding school. During the performances the riders wear the same uniform as they did 200 years ago and everything is as it always has been.

Spanische Hofreitschule | The Spanish Riding School

Address: Hofburg, 1010 Vienna

Public transport: Underground U3 Herrengasse

Opening hours: Tue – Sun 09 am – 04 pm

Fridays when there is a performance 09 am – 07 pm

Closed on Mondays

Morning Exercise: Tue – Sat 09 am – 12 am

THE IMPERIAL SILVER COLLECTION -THE HABSBURGS SERVED UP THE GOLD RESERVES

What awaits you in the Imperial Silver Collection will show that we have actually only gotten to know a very small portion of the immense treasures of this dynasty – one that lasted for more than 600 years. You can reach the Hofburg Museums through the passageway in between the Michaeler Wing and the Inner Burghof.

The Entrance – Silver Collection, Sisi Museum and the Imperial Apartments

The first rooms that you set foot into once you enter the museum are home to the so-called Imperial Silver Collection. But here you will see far more than the silver objects necessary to run the imperial household. The Imperial Silver Collection namely consists of the Court Silver and Table Room, the Court Porcelain Collection and objects from the Court Confectionery, the Court Cellar and the Court Linen Room.

First we will pass the copper vessels, pans and cooking and baking molds of the Court Kitchen. Copper molds were used in countless ways for dishes in aspic, sponge cakes, creams, nougat and of course also the imperial Bundt cake, the so-called Guglhupf.

In the Court Kitchen you will get an impression of the art and the magnitude of the Court Confectionery Bakery – a tradition with very high standards that to this day are met by the Court Confectionery Bakery Demel¹ and the Hotel Sacher² .

A highlight of the Imperial Silver Chamber is definitely the opulent Grand Vermeil service. It is a service made out of fire-gilt silver that consists of 4500 pieces and weighs over one ton.

Maybe even more fascinating than this opulent service is the small, but very curious collection of jugs and washing utensils: These are the objects that were used in the centuries-old tradition of the foot-washing ceremony. This is a tradition that at first glance seems to greatly contrast everything else that you have seen up until now in the Imperial Silver Collection.

Every year 24 poor and elderly subjects from the Habsburgs Empire were selected to take part in this foot-washing ceremony. With the help of the displayed objects, the emperor washed the feet of the twelve elderly men and the empress the feet of the twelve elderly women in an act of Christian humility. Afterwards the chosen were fed an ample Lenten meal and each royally endowed with 30 silver coins.

This foot-washing ceremony, which until today is practiced on Holy Thursday by the Pope in Rome, as well as by the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, has its roots in a story from the Gospel of John. According to this story, Jesus washed and dried the feet of his apostles after the Last Supper -an act of Christian humility demonstrating the insignificance of worldly hierarchies in the eyes of God.

Once you have gotten your fill of the Imperial Silver Collection, continue on to the first floor where you can take a glance behind the scenes of the official orchestration of the imperial family.

You need only one ticket for the Imperial Apartments³ , the Sisi Museum and the Imperial Silver Collection. At the ticket office you can also buy combo tickets, which allow you to combine your visit to the Hofburg Museums with additional other exhibitions. The greatest advantage of these combo tickets is that you avoid the long waiting lines in front of the ticket offices.

Silberkammer | Imperial Silver Collection

Address: Hofburg, 1010 Vienna

Public transport: Underground U3 Herrengasse

Opening hours

September – June daily 09 am to 05.30 pm

July – August daily 09 am to 06 pm Admission till an hour before closing time

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Vienna has the best quality of life in the world for the six year in a row (2009-2016). According to Mercer’s Quality of Living Index, one of the reasons for this top rating is the Public Transportation in Vienna.

How to buy a ticket

For all public transport lines, you need only one unique ticket marked “zone 100” – that means the city center:

• 1. On the bus or tram – price: €2.20
• 2. At the machines in underground stations

You can switch the interface language from German to English, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian, Czech, Slovakian, Hungarian, Slovenian and Croatian.

• 3. At the ticket office

You can buy the tickets at following underground stations from Monday to

Friday, 06:30 am – 06:30 pm:

Stephansplatz, Schwedenplatz, Karlsplatz, Praterstern, Landstrasse, Sudtiroler Platz / Hauptbahnhof, Westbahnhof, Spittelau, Reumannplatz, Philadelphiabrucke, Hietzing, Ottakring, Heiligenstadt, Floridsdorf, Kagran.

• 4. Buy tickets in advance. Online: www.wienerlinien.at

Map of Vienna, Austria

How and when to validate your ticket

Make sure you have a valid ticket before boarding. Insert your ticket in the blue ticket validators located at the entrance to underground stations, as well as on buses and trams. Ticket bought from the tram or bus driver does not have to be validated again. Single ticket is for one journey one-way only. You can travel with a ticket between point A and point B, but only without interruption between these two points. Anyway, you can change your transportation type between bus, tram or underground as often as you need: Single ticket: €2.20 24-hour card: €7.60 48-hour card: €13.30 72-hour card: €16.50

8-day cards – you can use this set of 8 cards for 8 days for one person or for more persons, up to 8 persons. But you need to validate one part of the ticket per person and day: €38.40

Weekly card is only valid from Monday to Sunday: €15.80

If you don’t want to fiddle with change at the ticket machine, you can buy tickets online at www.wienerlinien.at, with the special option to buy the tickets for your mobile phone.

Travelling without a valid ticket

If you are caught without a valid ticket on the bus and tram or at the underground platform, after the ticket validator, as well as in underground train, you will be fined with 103 €, without exceptions.

How to travel around Austria and beyond

BY TRAIN

Austrian Railways or OBB offers discount “SparSchiene Austria” tickets (www.oebb.at) to many destinations in Austria starting from €9. “SparSchiene Europe” tickets are discount tickets to several destinations in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Hungary starting from €19 for a one-way ticket. There is a limited number of tickets at this price, so you need to book “SparSchiene” ticket in advance: www.oebb.at

BY BUS

Vienna International Busterminal (VIB) is the main bus station for international transport. VIB is directly connected with the Vienna Public Transportation Network by Underground U3, Station: Erdberg. You can book your bus ticket online at www.eurolines.at

Hermes at the Hermesvilla | Villa Hermes

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