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Walk 'old town'
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The old town walk
The old town centre of Vienna is not so large, so the walk that we are suggesting now is no more than 4 km long. Our starting point is the Stadtpark underground station.
This underground station was designed by Otto Wagner, an artist cum architect who was a member of the Wiener Secession, a Jugendstil movement. On our walk through the Stadtpark two things will be drawing our attention, the small Jugendstil bridge over the Wien and the Johann Strauss monument.
In this park most of the furniture and lighting is in the Viennese Jugendstil designed by Otto Wagner. On the walk, you cannot fail to miss the vast number of statues. Most of them depict famous musicians, such as Stolz and Schubert.
Now we are swapping the greenery for the buildings of the old town centre. We have to cross the ring and walk into the Himmelpfortgasse. So we walk past the Winter Palace of Prince Eugene. The palace now houses a ministry, but the inner garden is still open to the public. You simply have to visit this!
The Kapuzinerkirche is located just a little further. We are particularly interested in the Kaisergruft which we can visit via a side street (no entrance via the church itself). When we have completed this visit, we walk through the Plankengasse to reach the Dorotheergasse. We turn right at this point and pass by the Synagogue which was the only one to survive the Crystal Night of November 1938. We turn right at the end and thus reach the Stephansdom or St Stephen’s Cathedral, which we naturally visit.
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Now we walk into the Rotenturmstrasse and past the Dom and Diözesanmuseum, and we turn left to the Hoher Markt, the oldest square in Vienna. This extends to the Altes Rathaus or old town hall which has now become a shopping and office complex.
This is where we end the walk in the old town. You can then spend your time shopping or visiting museums. In this area there are a number of small museums, such as the Feuerwehrmuseum (fire brigade museum), the Uhrenmuseum (clock museum) and the Poppen- und Spielzugmuseum (doll and toy museum).
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Picture: © iStockphoto.com
Text: GVDV/RD - © AT-Europe sprl
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