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

café becomes a home from home, where you can be alone in company.

The first documentary evidence of a Viennese coffeehouse dates back to an establishment on what is now Rotenturmstrasse 14 in the old town. It was opened by an Armenian by the name of Johann Diodato in 1685. Today, this address is home to Café Daniel Moser. Different groups of people have their preferred coffeehouse: the ministerial functionaries go to Café Ministerium on Georg-Coch-Platz, the art students to Prückel on Stubenring and the politicians to Landtmann on Universitätsring.

Home from Home

Today the poet Peter Altenberg - or at least a papier-mâché version of him - still holds court in Café Central in Herrengasse in the first district. In the first third of the 20th century this was Altenberg’s postal address and where he had his Stammtisch (“regulars’ table”), the place where he would meet up with Adolf Loos, one of the most important Modernist architects, and his wife Lina, the actor and essayist Egon Friedell and the writer Alfred Polgar. Today the atmosphere at Café Central is distinctly upmarket and bourgeois. During the week it is popular with businesspeople, while at the weekends visitors to the city encircle the papier-mâché poet and listen to the piano music. Café Hawelka is also located in the first district. Its popularity and artsy image dates back to the post-war period when the little coffeehouse kept its doors open until midnight. In the 1950s and 1960s the writers, artists and intellectuals that frequented Café Hawelka turned it into the home of the anti-bourgeois oppositional artist movement. Numerous literary figures regularly met there including the members of the Wiener Gruppe (Vienna Group) - H.C. Artmann, Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Rühm and Oswald Wiener. And although a fair amount has changed at Hawelka since those times, one thing has