Vienna, the appealingly refined city that was once home to Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, Strauss and Mahler, has more cultural delights than you can shake a conductor’s baton at. As the Austrian writer Karl Kraus once put it: “The streets of Vienna are paved with culture. The streets of other cities are paved with stone.
” The Austrian capital offers the best in everything from painting to palaces. Oh yes, and it can also lay claim to serving the world’s most scrumptious cake. Vienna is a marvellous city to walk around.
Wandering down the wide-open boulevards of the majestic historical centre, you are surrounded by mighty imperial buildings that resemble giant wedding cakes – in a good way. If all that is not enough to tempt you to visit, you may well be inspired to go to the Austrian capital by watching Vienna Blood, the arresting period crime drama whose fourth series began on BBC2 earlier this week. Perhaps the most celebrated cultural artefact in the city is Gustav Klimt’s globally famous 1907 painting, The Kiss, which hangs in the Upper Belvedere Palace.
This Unesco World Heritage Site houses more Klimts – a total of 24 – than any other museum on earth. Constructed in 1717 as the residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy, the head of the ruling Habsburg dynasty, the baroque palace possesses an innate grandeur. The neo-classical statues outside the front of the Palace depict wild, rearing stallions being tamed by mythological figures.
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