The Viennese coffeehouse

An itinerary highlight for visitors to Vienna and a home from home for quite a few locals: the Viennese coffeehouse. Viennese coffeehouse culture was added to the UNESCO list of intangible cultural assets in 2011.

Release time : 2019-07-10 11:19:53

source : https://www.wien.info

There are around 2,400 coffeehouses in Vienna, ranging from elegant traditional cafés to simple bistros with standing room only, and from spacious café-restaurants to cozy café-patisseries. In the capital’s classic coffee houses, the wait staff are still dressed in black, and the décor is as like it was in the ‘good old days’: wooden floors, marble-topped tables, simple Thonet chairs and plush bench seating. Traditional Viennese coffeehouses usually also have a wide range of national and international newspapers for its guests to peruse. The complimentary little glass of water served alongside each cup of coffee is an absolute must, whatever the location.

In 2011 Vienna’s coffeehouse culture was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list. According the official report, “the coffeehouses are a place where patrons consume time and space, but only the coffee appears on the bill.” This perfectly captures what a traditional Viennese coffeehouse has to offer - other than a delicious Melange coffee and a slice of fresh Gugelhupf. The city’s coffeehouses are the ideal place to take time out, and open to all echelons of society. Then as now, the capital’s coffeehouses fulfil an important social function. People go to them to philosophize, lounge about, meditate, read the paper, gossip, flirt, play billiards or chess, talk to friends and strangers about everything and anything. And, of course, enjoy coffee and the odd slice of cake.

While the coffeehouses might have changed over the years, the reasons for visiting them have very much stayed the same. As Stefan Zweig wrote in Die Welt von gestern, the café is still “a democratic club where a cup of coffee can be had cheaply and where for this small sum every guest can sit, discuss, write, play cards, receive mail and, above all, consume an unlimited number of newspapers and magazines for hours on end.” The