Ideal for a city break, Vienna is a pocket of culture and sophistication. Spend your holiday wandering the city, interrupting your adventure with museums. Visit the Albertina, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, MAK Museum of Applied Arts and the Leopold.
For music lovers, take to the opera house or the Rathaus, where there’s live music in the summer. For a relaxing stay, idle away the morning in a coffee house and the afternoon in a sumptuous hotel spa, squeezing in a lunch of schnitzel in the middle. If you’re looking for a luxury holiday, Vienna welcomes you in with widespread arms. Book flights to Vienna and get your city break started.
The ‘Golden Quarter’ in the pedestrianised city centre is stuffed full of designer shops: Chanel nestled in cobbled streets opposite Louis Vuitton. The eye-catching façade of Schullin, the jewellers, is almost as big a draw as its beautiful contemporary pieces, whilst J&L Lobmeyr sell the finest glass in Vienna. For a modern boutique with street fashion, visit Park, they also throw the odd catwalk show.
The Park Hyatt’s Arany Spa has the most decadent surroundings. Set in the vaults of a converted bank building, it has more gold in it than Klimt could fit on a canvas. The Kempinski’s spa is decked out in the rich colours of the Ottoman Empire and feels suitably sumptuous. The Ritz Carlton’s pool even has underwater speakers. In Vienna, the lap of luxury comes with fluffy towels.
For traditional splendour, the Ritz Carlton, occupying four adjoining townhouses on the Ringstraße, is topped with a splendid roof terrace and has a very fine steak joint. The Guest House aims to be home away from home – if your house happened to be a filled with art photography, design icon furniture, huge, airy rooms and has a bakery below it. This is the contemporary face of luxury life.
In the evening, follow the uppermost echelons of society to a Viennese ball and dance the Polonaise and the waltz with silk-clad Debutantes until the early hours. Balls occur in the winter and the calendar is full – there’s the Opera Ball, the masked ball and a ball for coffee house owners. Or book tickets to Vienna State Opera. In any other city it would be the standout building, but the Viennese are more preoccupied with the world-class performances themselves, which range from the tragic to the desperately romantic.
Sumptuous spas
Special places to stay
A night to remember
