Austria · Old Town
Vienna
A self-guided walking tour of the Vienna Old Town, every street in two days.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Vienna is a line of dots you collect by walking it. I have been lying in one of them for six hundred years and I am still not finished.
At a glance
Plan your walk.
- Distance
- 48.8 km
- Time
- about 14 hours
- Streets
- 219
- Steps
- 8 streets with steps
- Start point
- Stephansdom
- Phone needed while walking
- no
- Works offline
- yes
- Expires
- never
The Old Town
Every street, drawn.
Every lane inside that line is a course. The circles are fruit.
Landmarks
What I would eat first.
Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.
Stephansdom 1,500 points
Everybody on the square looks up at the tower. Look at the roof instead: 230,000 glazed tiles laid into a pattern. The only way to see it properly is from a lane at some distance, not from directly underneath. Walk the far side of the block.
Albertina 500 points
From Albertinaplatz you are looking at a wall covered in stone figures with a house sitting on top of it. Take the ramp. The terrace up there is the flattest, quietest spot on this level, and it costs nothing to stand on.
Hofburg 500 points
This one is not a halt, it is a route. Four of the names on this level are just parts of this one building: Hofburg, Michaelertrakt, Schweizertor, Augustinertrakt. Go in under one arch and keep walking until you come out under another. Nobody will ask you to leave.
Kaisergruft 500 points
What you see from the lane is a Capuchin church front with no decoration on it at all, and a door at pavement height. The door goes down. Everything worth having here is under the paving, which is where I keep mine.
Looshaus 500 points
On the Michaelerplatz, across the cobbles from the big domed gate. At street level, four marble columns. Above them, a front as bare as an unbuttered roll, and the bareness is the point. Stand under the columns, look up and work out what the upper floors are missing. I am not telling you what.
Spanische Hofreitschule 500 points
Two of the street names on this level belong to it: Reitschulgasse, and Stallburggasse for the stalls round the corner. From outside there is not much to look at, a long wall and a gate. Go early. What you cannot see, you can hear.
Freyung 250 points
Do not come in off the road. Take the Ferstelpassage in from Herrengasse instead: shops, a kink, a six-sided court under a glass roof. Then the open space arrives all at once, which is how a square ought to be handed over.
Hohe Brücke 250 points
You will cross this without noticing there was anything to cross, because from up top it looks as though the lane simply goes on. Find the steps at either end, go down, and turn round. From down there it stops being a lane.
Kabarett Simpl 250 points
You will go past this one twice before you find it. There is nothing on the outside: a door in a row of doors, out in the eastern lanes. What happens in there happens in the evening, and none of it is for looking at.
Ministerienbrunnen 250 points
The eastern end of the level, out on the wide ring road where the lanes give up. There are two of them, one to each side of the doorway, and they are the only reason to walk this far east. Go out, look, come back. The lanes are tastier and they know it.
Ringturm 250 points
The northern tip of the level. Where the Ring runs into the quay it never had a proper ending, so somebody put one there: 23 storeys of it. You can spot this from six lanes away, which makes it the only honest signpost on the whole walk.
Ruprechtskirche 250 points
Two of this level's street names point at it and one of them is a staircase. Take the Ruprechtsstiege. It is the least of the sights on this walk and the easiest to miss, sitting on the lip of the terrace where the pavement falls away past it.
Schwarzenberg 250 points
The far south-east corner, where the level runs out onto the wide road. It is the one halt on this walk with chairs in it, and the chairs are the point. I have never sat down and I am not starting now.
Eating
Actual food.
Vienna cooked for an empire and helped itself to most of it. Goulash came up by way of Pressburg early in the nineteenth century, the pulled strudel dough travelled in across the Balkans, and the oxen for the beef walked here from Hungary on their own legs. The Austrian register says it plainly: many Viennese classics come from the crown lands and from Hungary, and boiled beef is the city's own. The other thing Vienna never had to import is its vegetables. They have been grown in and around the city since the fifteenth century.
Meat and fish
Wiener Schnitzel
Veal from the leg, turned in flour, beaten egg and breadcrumbs, then fried golden in fat deep enough to swim in. Everyone will tell you a field marshal brought it home from Milan. A historian took that story apart in 2001, and a linguist found where it began: an Italian food guide from 1969. Vienna was breading and frying long before the field marshal.
A Wiener Schnitzel on the menu is veal by definition. Schnitzel Wiener Art is the pork version, so read which one it says.
Tafelspitz
Beef from the leg of a young ox, simmered for three hours or more, sliced, and served with chive sauce, apple or bread horseradish and roast potatoes. A Viennese columnist wrote down the local standard: nobody belonged in this city who could not talk knowledgeably about at least a dozen cuts of boiled beef. I can name three, and I am a rock.
Wiener Saftgulasch
Beef shin and a great many onions, braised for hours with paprika, caraway and marjoram and never dusted with flour, so the sauce thickens on its own. In Vienna it is a late morning dish, the classic fork breakfast, with a crisp roll on the side. The local saying holds that goulash is only good once it has been reheated. I have all the time that takes.
Vegetarian
Kaisersemmel
A round white roll with a five part star. On the Handsemmel that star is folded in by hand, on a dough that rests at least two hours. The register calls it an essential part of the Viennese breakfast. The star is not decoration. It buys more crust, and the crust is where the flavour lives.
Ask for a Handsemmel. The stamped ones are the same roll with the star pressed in by machine.
Geröstete Eierschwammerl
Chanterelles, roasted fast in the pan with a little onion and finished with beaten egg. This is an Austrian dish more than a Viennese one, and the register files it that way. The season runs from late June to the end of September. Austrian forest law lets one person take two kilos a day out of the woods, which I would call a light lunch.
The register's recipe starts the onions in Schmalz. Ask which fat the kitchen uses.
Apfelstrudel
Sour apples, cinnamon, raisins and toasted breadcrumbs, rolled into a dough pulled so thin it lets the light through. The oldest handwritten strudel recipe the register knows dates from 1696, and that one was filled with milk and cream. An old saying holds that a cook in love pulls the dough thin enough to read her love letters through it.
Vegan
Two entries, and both are vegetables rather than dishes. That is the honest answer here. The cooked Viennese classics in the register stand on beef, veal, egg and butter, and the plant side of the city's food grows out in the market gardens, which is exactly where these two come from.
Riesen von Aspern
A radish four to four and a half centimetres across, sometimes six, selected by the market gardeners around Aspern and on the Austrian variety list since 1951. Big radishes tend to go hollow. This one hardly ever does. Eaten raw, cut into strips or grated, or laid on bread.
Harvest starts at the beginning of March and it is on sale for four or five weeks. Ask for it then. The rest of the year it simply is not there.
Wiener Gemüse
Vienna grows its own vegetables and has done since the fifteenth century. In 2020 that was 136 market gardens working 202 hectares, mostly out in Simmering and Donaustadt. More than forty kinds, sold all year round.
At a market stall, ask which of it grew in Vienna. The city has its own label for that, Stadternte Wien.
Late breakfast
Cà Phê Lalot come for the one thing: the pandan canelé
Wipplingerstraße 25
A day café that cooks from Vietnamese ideas: omelette with crispy chili oil, lychee granola, a lunch plate that changes. The coffee is Vietnamese, in its own roasts. Gault&Millau calls the pandan canelé the compulsory order. Everything else here is a matter of taste. The canelé, apparently, is not.
- Monclosed
- Tue09:00–15:00
- Wed09:00–15:00
- Thu09:00–15:00
- Fri09:00–15:00
- Sat10:00–16:00
- Sunclosed
On weekdays breakfast stops at half past eleven, so come early. On Saturday it runs until four. Nobody takes reservations.
Sources: Gault&Millau Österreich, Falter, MeinBezirk Innere Stadt
Afternoon coffee
Café Hawelka the old one
Dorotheergasse 6
Falter counts it among the oldest and best known Kaffeehäuser in Vienna, and people from art and literature made it their meeting place. Padded chairs, keepsakes, and coffee from the house's own roastery out in the twenty third district. The strudel and the house cakes are made here too. I would come for the strudel and let the history sit at the next table.
- Mon09:00–24:00
- Tue09:00–24:00
- Wed09:00–24:00
- Thu09:00–24:00
- Fri09:00–01:00
- Sat09:00–01:00
- Sun09:00–22:00
Sources: Gault&Millau Österreich, Falter, Sprudge
Die Cafetière come for the one thing: the ham and cheese toast
Wipplingerstraße 25
An espresso bar in 1950s style, with coffee Falter calls first class. The toast is the reason, though: Gault&Millau reports that people who know rate this ham and cheese toast the best in the city. Bread, ham, cheese and heat. A dish with nowhere to hide.
- Mon07:30–18:00
- Tue07:30–18:00
- Wed07:30–18:00
- Thu07:30–18:00
- Fri07:30–18:00
- Sat09:00–16:00
- Sunclosed
Sources: Falter, Gault&Millau Österreich, Falstaff
Café Exchange where locals go
Georg-Coch-Platz 2
A third wave espresso bar inside Otto Wagner's Postsparkasse, run as part of the Angewandte's interdisciplinary lab. The beans come from small independent roasters, and besides espresso there is brew coffee, house lemonade and kombucha. Otto Wagner built this hall for a savings bank. These days the deposits are espresso.
- Mon09:00–17:30
- Tue09:00–17:30
- Wed09:00–17:30
- Thu09:00–17:30
- Fri09:00–17:30
- Sat10:30–17:00
- Sunclosed
It shuts on public holidays, weekday or not, so check the date before you walk over.
Dinner
Kern Beisl the old one
Kleeblattgasse 4
Falstaff has one family running this Beisl since 1962, and says it has stayed what it always was: small and cosy, in a narrow lane of the centre, with Viennese home cooking at a very fair price for the first district. Room for about forty five inside, and a Schanigarten outside. Since 1962 is not long, for a stone. For a Beisl it is a proper start.
The listings disagree about the hours. One has it closing at four on Monday and Tuesday, and they differ on whether Saturday is open. Check the house page before you come for dinner.
Gasthaus Pöschl where locals go
Weihburggasse 17
A small Beisl at the Franziskanerplatz, in a quiet corner of the first district. Der Feinschmecker calls the cooking down to earth and Viennese, Gault&Millau calls it authentic Austrian. One regular told Falter it makes the best potato salad in eastern Austria. I have not tasted every potato salad in eastern Austria. I am working through them.
- Mon12:00–23:00
- Tue12:00–23:00
- Wed12:00–23:00
- Thu12:00–23:00
- Fri12:00–23:00
- Sat12:00–23:00
- Sunclosed
The kitchen stops at ten, an hour before the house closes, and on Sunday it is shut. Eat early.
Sources: Der Feinschmecker, Gault&Millau Österreich, Falter
Checked 30 September 2026.
With kids
Short legs, big appetite.
The streets here are full of dots to collect, and a child on a hunt forgets to be tired. Here is a short loop for the smallest walkers.
- The loop
- Stephansdom, Hofburg, Spanische Hofreitschule, Freyung, and back to the start
- Distance
- 2.0 km
- Time
- about 40 minutes of walking at a child's pace (3 km/h)
- Steps
- no streets with steps on the loop
- Playgrounds
- none on the map near the loop
- Public toilets
- 9 near the loop, 3 with a changing table
- Drinking water
- 11 near the loop
- Ice cream
- 10 near the loop
Near the loop means within 150 m of it, counted from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Name origin
Why it is called Vienna.
Vienna is named after a stream. The city's own lexicon says it in four words: named after the Wienfluss. That river's old name is Celtic, Vedunia, a woodland brook, and the name Wien grew out of it. The town's name is first written down in 881, in the Salzburg annals, as "apud Weniam", at Vienna, and recent research reads that Wenia as a settlement, however rough, not the river. The Romans had a name of their own, Vindobona, built from a Celtic man's name, Vindos, and a word for a farm estate. The estate did not stick. The brook did. Streams are patient. So am I.
Sources: Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki); Austria-Forum (AEIOU Österreich-Lexikon), Wien/Geschichte; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Besiedelung; Austria-Forum, Wien, Geschichte; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Mittelalter; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Vindobona
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
Dry footing, high enough. The Old Town sits on the Stadtterrasse, a plateau right on what was then the southernmost and navigable main arm of the Danube. The ground steps down from the hills towards the river in terraces, and where this one meets the Danube Canal it does not slope off, it drops; some of those drops are still climbed by stairs. The Romans put their camp up here, on the empire's frontier, to guard the Danube. When settlers came back for good in the 10th century they moved into the old camp for its view over the river and the land around it. Medieval Vienna began as a slight rise inside those Roman lines. I would have picked it too. The view is wasted on me. The cobbles are not.
Sources: Wien Museum, Vindobona, Informationen zum Römermuseum für LehrerInnen; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Geographische Lage; Österreichische UNESCO-Kommission, Historisches Zentrum von Wien; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Vindobona; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Stadtmauer; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Mittelalter
Why then
When the first stone went down.
97. That year Vindobona became one of 30 legion stations of the Roman Empire. Soldiers had come a little earlier: between 89 and 92 a fort for a British cavalry unit went up, probably where the Schottenkloster later stood, and the army built the camp in the last decade of the 1st century. By about 430 the military administration had come apart. Then the digs go blank. Over the collapsed barracks lies a layer with no finds in it at all, and on the old Roman ground the diggers find no settlement again until about the 9th or 10th century. Only then did settlers move back into the camp for good, and in 1221 the town got its oldest charter. Centuries of nothing. A short nap, by my standards.
Sources: Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Antike/Ereignisse; Wien Museum, Vindobona, Informationen zum Römermuseum für LehrerInnen; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Vindobona; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Stadtmauer; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Babenberger
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 97–430
Rome. From 97 this was a legion station on the Danube frontier, and the town answered to the army. By about 430 that had come apart, and antiquity here ends with the Roman troops leaving around 420 or 430. In the digs you can see it: the collapsed barracks roofs, a layer above them with late Roman finds but no buildings, and then a layer with nothing at all.
Sources: Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Antike/Ereignisse; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Mittelalter; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Vindobona
- 976–1246
The Babenbergs, the family that ruled Austria from 976 to 1246 and became lords of this town around 1135. Around 1155 they called the Scots monks from Regensburg to Vienna and moved their own residence into the town, from Klosterneuburg to a castle inside the old walls on the square this level still calls Am Hof. In 1156 Heinrich II became Duke of Austria. In 1221 they gave Vienna its oldest town charter. By 1280 at the latest the castle had stopped being a residence and the square had started becoming a market, which is the right direction for a building to travel.
Sources: Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Babenberger; Austria-Forum, Wien, Geschichte; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Am Hof
- 1251–1276
Ottokar II Přemysl of Bohemia. With the Babenbergs gone, the Austrian estates elected him prince of the land in 1251, when he was still Margrave of Moravia. The town's historians call his years the interregnum, the gap between two families, and Vienna came out of it stronger than it went in.
Sources: Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Ottokar II. Přemysl; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Babenberger; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Wiener Wappen
- 1278–1918
The Habsburgs. Rudolf I made his ceremonial entry into Vienna on 30 November 1276, and Vienna became the realm's capital in Austria. The city's own lexicon dates their era to 1278 until 1918: six hundred and forty years under one family, and I respect a number like that. In 1282, already under Habsburg lordship, Konrad Poll is named as Vienna's first mayor, and the cross on the town's own shield turns up at roughly the same time.
Sources: Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Rudolf I.; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Babenberger; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Mittelalter; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Wiener Wappen
- 1920–
Vienna itself. On 10 November 1920 the city became a federal province of its own: the mayor now also served as governor, and the city council sat as the provincial parliament. The separation law with Lower Austria, passed in identical words by both parliaments on 29 December 1921, took effect on 1 January 1922. Apart from the years 1934–1938 and 1938–1945, that is how it has stood ever since. After Rome, the dukes, a king of Bohemia and the emperors, who runs this place is decided inside it.
Sources: Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Wien wird Bundesland
The emblem
What the shield means.
A white cross on a red shield. The province's law says it in one line: the arms of the federal capital Vienna show a white cross in a red shield. The first town seal borrowed its lord's arms, the Babenberg eagle. The cross is Vienna's own, traceable from about 1278, which puts it among the oldest town arms that did not start out as a seal picture. Its oldest witness is a coin, a Vienna penny, with a beam cross running right out to the shield's edge. In 1327 the cross sits on the eagle's breast in the small town seal, and in 1461 Friedrich III granted the city a double eagle as well. Where the cross came from, nobody knows. Crosses usually mark a town with a bishop for its lord, and Vienna was not one; the imperial storm banner has been weighed as the source, and the city's own lexicon says the comparative study that would settle it is still missing. I can wait.
Sources: Republik Österreich, Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), Landesrecht Wien, Gesetzesnummer 20000334, geltende Fassung; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Wiener Wappen
Emblem: Public domain — official coat of arms (Wikimedia Commons)
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
The outline you are walking is Roman. The camp wall was built solidly enough to outlast Rome and serve as the wall ring of the first medieval town, which is why its shape can still be read on the east, south and west sides of the inner city. The curve of the Rabensteig follows its rounded north-east corner. In the Naglergasse the medieval wall ran along today's even-numbered houses. Two churches use the Roman wall as their footing, the Ruprechtskirche and Maria am Gestade, and one gate of the medieval wall, at the Fischerstiege, stood until 1776. Inside, every medieval building line departs from the Roman ones. They kept the crust and rearranged the filling.
Sources: Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Vindobona; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Rabensteig; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Naglergasse; Wien Museum, Vindobona, Informationen zum Römermuseum für LehrerInnen; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Stadtmauer
The Graben is a filled-in hole. It is the ditch of the Roman camp: at the end of the 12th century the town grew over it, and it was filled, levelled and built on, paid for out of the ransom raised for the English king Richard the Lionheart. In 1294 it appears in the records as a thoroughfare, in 1300 as a market place. Then the groceries arrived. Milk from 1300, cabbage from 1320, bread shops from 1338, women selling greens from 1418. A ditch that turned into a larder. Nobody in this city has ever done better with a hole.
Before Maria Theresa's house numbers arrived in 1771, a sign was the only way to tell one Viennese house from the next, and some of those signs are still on the street plates of this level. Stoß im Himmel has carried its name since 1796, after the sign of house number 3. In the 18th century a colonial-goods dealer on the Wollzeile hung out a wrought-iron sign, the Schmeckende Wurm, half lindworm and half crocodile, and schmecken then meant to smell; the passage courtyard is named after it. The Steindlgasse is named after a sign called Zum Steindl, the little stone, on record by 1701. I take that one personally.
Sources: Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Hausschild; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Stoß im Himmel; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Schmeckender-Wurm-Hof; Stadt Wien (Wien Geschichte Wiki), Steindlgasse
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- Gasse
- The ordinary word for a lane here, and most of this level ends in it. Read the plates and lunch writes itself: Milchgasse, Salzgasse, Essiggasse, milk, salt and vinegar, with a Bäckerstraße for the bread. The trades are on them too: Naglergasse, Färbergasse, Kramergasse. And the Irisgasse is so short it is over before I have worked out how it tastes.
- Stiege, Steig, Steg
- A stair, a climb, a footway. The Old Town sits on a terrace, and where the ground drops away the drops get steps: Fischerstiege, Ruprechtsstiege, Marienstiege, Hafnersteig, Rabensteig, Mölker Steig, Lichtensteg. Seven ways up, and I take every one of them at the same speed.
- Hof
- A courtyard, and here a courtyard can count as a street: Haarhof, Ledererhof, Schulhof, Fischhof, Trattnerhof, Tuchlaubenhof, Schmeckender-Wurm-Hof. Then there is Am Hof, which is a whole square named after a castle. A room with no roof, with a lane running into it and then stopping.
- Bastei
- A bastion of the town's defences. Augustinerbastei, Coburgbastei, Dominikanerbastei, Mölker Bastei, Schottenbastei, Stubenbastei. The bastions are names now, and the names kept the line, which is why all six sit on the rim of this level instead of anywhere sensible.
- Markt
- A market, and this level has five: Hoher Markt, Neuer Markt, Bauernmarkt, Fleischmarkt, Wildpretmarkt. Farmers, meat and game, all on the street plates. Five of the names on this level are a shopping list, and I notice that sort of thing.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Vienna in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 219streets
- 2,508dots
- 39.9km of street
- 48.8km on foot
- 14hours at a stroll
Nearby
Old Towns close to this one.
The game
Your first city is free.
Cobble Gobble is a walking game for iPhone. Claim any city as your free one. Every other city is a one-time purchase you keep for good, Family Sharing included, and a city you own plays fully offline.