A Maverick's Guide to The New Vienna
Contemporary Buildings, Museums, Nightlife Share Spotlight with Old
Nov 6, 2008
Many of Vienna’s buildings date back centuries and the attractions that appeal to tourists have been around for a long time, too. But in recent years, another Vienna has been emerging – one that’s cutting-edge, avant garde, incredibly cool, and equally appealing.
Accommodations
Take its lodging places, for example. Financially advantaged traditionalists stay only in hotels like the Bristol and Imperial qualify as suitable places to stay. Secure. Predictable. Pricey. Their less affluent, but equally conventional, fellow travelers stop at family-run establishments with painted hearts and flowers on the furniture.
Travelers who want to waltz to a different drummer, however many bucks they have to spend, seek out places like Hotel Alstadt (Kirchengrasse, 41), where no one of its 25 rooms and nine suites looks like the other. Walls painted cranberry and ochre in one; a vivid blue-green in the next. Off-beat art nouveau and contemporary paintings combine with artistically mismatched furniture create the feeling that you’re visiting an eccentric auntie. Like most of Vienna’s non-trad lodging places, the Alstadt wasn’t originally built to be a hotel.
Sightseeing
Structural icons of the twentieth century like Kleins Café (Franziskanerplatz 3) and Phillips-Haus (Triesterstrassa 64-66) have already become so incorporated into the city’s culture that true non-traditionalist will want to seek out more controversial works.
Favorites among them include Haas Haus (Stephansplatz 4). Across the square from the magnificent St. Stephens, the Hans Hollein-designed building reflects the cathedral in its stunning glass façade. The Christ Hope of the World Church across the Danube in Donau City (Donaucitystrasse 2), designed by Heinz Tesar and completed in 1999, is another of the city’s ultra-modern architectural spectaculars.
Museums
Among Vienna’s new museums, which opened in the last decade of the 20th Century, Ludwig and Leopold Museums in the MuseumQuartier are among the city’s treasures and not to be missed. The Ludwig was the first bilding in Austria actually designed as a modern art museum and the Leopold focuses on 19th and 20th century Austrian art.
For the truly icon-smashing, however, mavericks spend their time at KunstHausWien (Vienna Art Museum) near the Danube Canal at Untere Weissgerberstrasse 13. The museum building, designed by Friedrich Hundertwasser as a “bastion against the dictatorship of the straight line, the ruler and T-square,” strikes traditionalists as downright bizarre.
Nightlife
Formerly the city’s red light district, more than a mile-long strip of the area under the elevated railway has been transformed with smart shops, restaurants and nightclubs where the action starts along about midnight. And while even mavericks sometimes attend the traditionally sublime concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverien, you’ll more frequently find them at jazz great Joe Zawinul’s Birdland in the Hilton Hotel. Named after the New York club where Zawinul hung out during the years he played piano/keyboard with Weather Report and his best-known musical composition, Birdland is run by his son, Erich.
You’ll also find that Vienna has become a super power in electronic music, which mixes electronic sounds with live ones, and in producing globe trotting DJ stars like Vlado Dzihan (pronounced Gee-hahn) and Mario Kamien.
Coffee Houses
The only public places in the new Vienna that may disappoint the maverick are its coffee houses. While several of the restaurants that opened in the last couple of decades like Blau Stern (Doblinger Gurtel 2) serve great food in sophisticated surroundings, the newer coffee houses with their noise and unimaginative décor simply can’t compete with the splendid late 19th Century interior of Café Central (Herringasse 14) or the considerable charm of the somewhat frayed Hawelka. (Dorotheergasse 6). But today’s mavericks can sip their traditional Viennese coffees with the ssatisfaction that Leon Trotsky, Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt, Arnold Schoenberg and their friends who patronized the coffee houses in their glory days were mavericks, too.
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