One of the great capitals of Europe, Vienna was for centuries home to the Habsburg rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today the empire is long gone, but many reminders of the city's imperial heyday remain, carefully preserved by the tradition-loving Viennese. When it comes to the arts, the glories of the past are particularly evergreen, thanks to the cultural legacy created by the many artistic geniuses nourished here.
From the late 18th century on, Vienna's culture -- particularly its musical forte -- was famous throughout Europe. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Strauss, Mahler, and Bruckner all lived in the city, producing music that is still played in concert halls all over the world. And at the tail end of the 19th century the city's artists and architects -- Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Josef Hoffmann, Otto Wagner, and Adolf Loos among them -- brought about an artistic revolution that swept away the past and set the stage for the radically experimental art of the 20th century.
Nevertheless, Vienna is a Baroque city, and as visitors explore churches filled with statues of golden saints and pink-cheeked cherubs, wander through treasure-packed museums, or while away an afternoon in one of those multitudinous meccas of mocha (the inevitable cafés), they begin to feel lapped in lashings of rich, delicious, whipped cream -- the beloved Schlagobers that garnishes most Viennese pastries.
The ambience of the city is ornate and frothy: white horses dancing to elegant music; snow dusting the opulent draperies of Empress Maria Theresa's monument; lavish decorations filling the interior courtyards of outwardly severe town houses; a gilded Johann Strauss among a grove of green trees; the voluptuous music of Richard Strauss; the geometric impasto of Klimt's paintings; the stately pavane of a mechanical clock. Magnificent, magnetic, and magical, the city beguiles one and all with Old World charm and courtly grace. It is a place where head waiters still bow as if saluting a Habsburg prince and Lipizzaner stallions dance intricate minuets to the strains of Mozart -- a city that waltzes. Like a well-bred grande dame, Vienna doesn't hurry, and, as you saunter through its stately streets, marveling at its Baroque palaces, neither should you.
