Where to stay in Vienna

The Prater is Vienna's vast urban park — 1,200 hectares with the famous Riesenrad (Giant Ferris Wheel from 1897), the Wurstelprater funfair, and forested paths that Beethoven walked. The surrounding Leopoldstadt neighborhood is experiencing a renaissance: galleries, restaurants, and the Jewish history of a district that was nearly erased.

Vienna's most diverse district — Turkish, Serbian, Romanian, Chinese, and Austrian communities share streets south of the Hauptbahnhof. No tourist sights, no English menus, and some of the city's best cheap food. The Wienerberg lake park is popular with locals in summer. This is where Viennese people actually live.

The Naschmarkt is Vienna's great open-air market — 1.5km of stalls selling Turkish bread, Austrian cheese, Persian spices, fresh Danube fish, and everything else imaginable. On Saturdays the flea market extends alongside. The 6th district around it has excellent cafés, wine bars, and the Secession Building — the golden-domed home of the Vienna Secession art movement.

Vienna's creative district: independent fashion designers, concept stores, coffee-obsessed third-wave cafés, and the MuseumsQuartier complex (among the largest cultural quarters in the world). Younger, less formal than the 1st district, but still distinctly Viennese in its commitment to quality and presentation.

The historic core within the Ringstraße: the Stephansdom, the Hofburg, the Vienna State Opera, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum all within walking distance. The most concentrated collection of Habsburg architecture on earth. Expensive to stay in, but the morning streets before the tourists arrive — when the trams ring and the Viennese walk to work — are extraordinary.

The vineyard villages on the hillsides above Vienna produce Grüner Veltliner and Riesling within the city limits — a unique wine tradition. Heuriger (wine taverns) open when the owner hangs a pine branch above the door, serve cold platters and house wine by the quarter-litre, and close when the barrel is empty. The Kahlenberg viewpoint above Grinzing overlooks the entire Vienna basin.