We start our city walk at the place and the building, which Emperor Franz Josef determined as the beginning of his monumental Imperial Palace (one of the biggest palace complexes in the world): the Vienna State Opera. And learn since when the Opera Ball has existed and where the most elegant balls in the city were held. See where Kasperl/punch himself had built the former ballet, theater and opera house of the city center and another place where the highest nobility officially played theater.

We find a place where, over the centuries, first flour warehouse workers sweated, then legionary candidates were recruited against Napoleon, and garcons/piccolos in ball gowns enlivened the fine restaurant ….

We admire the ceiling of a ballroom that probably had the most diverse of all uses: from a Parisian-style revue theater, to a cabaret, Vienna's 1st jazz venue and a disco where Udo Jürgens, among others, performed, to a fast-food restaurant. Who would think today that originally a pilgrims' hospital stood on this spot, then a monastery with a beer glut, a school attended by Franz Schubert and then the Viennese attraction of the Biedermeier period par excellence: a funpark where you could take an underground train trip around the world!

We follow the medieval community meadow of the Viennese citizens, we also meet a cow playing the bretto and a basilisk. We visit the burial place of the Habsburgs in the famous Capuchin`s Crypt with its magnificent coffins and the 2 most beautiful fountains of the city. We will enjoy fresh spring water from the hills with Viennese wine as a real "G'spritzten" with a little "Liptauer" and "Soletti" in one of the many obligatory wine cellars of the city, into which we "climb down".

Last but not least we also find one or the other trace of Mozart...

Part 1 “Cupid”
Here we find where the "New World" once was and admire a villa designed by the architect of the Empress Elisabeth/ Sissi Memorial Chapel. Passing the site of the theatre built by the Biedermeier architect Kornhäusl, we arrive at a private house adapted by Adolf Loos to house a flat he had previously designed for the new owner.

We pass the death house of Vienna's mayor, to whom Vienna owes its social housing, and see the neoclassical summer house of a noble family to whom Hietzing owes not only a poorhouse, but all of us a dessert classic of the Baroque era!

The villa of the most famous tragedian of the 19th century is on the way to one of the most famous Josef Hoffmann villas, in the immediate vicinity of which not only stands the "Lumpazidörfel" of that theatre director who was able to win over Johann Nestroy as an author, but also the most respected doctor of the Vienna Congress, to whose cousin Beethoven probably dedicated "Für Elise", lived. It is also possible that the Habsburgs owe their "Salt Princes" to him.

Emperor Franz Josef owed something quite different to two ladies who lived here in the same "block"...
There was even a door in the zoo`s wall... It is certain that one of them fed him coffee and croissants and the other Gugelhupf and milk. You can guess which one spent the evening of his life with him!

We hear about Sissi's dairy and why Emperor Franz Joseph "had a sense of decency" and where his illegitimate daughter lived. We also see the late Biedermeier suburban house in which Johann Strauss' son was now able to devote himself entirely to operetta, calling himself a suburban composer and thought that his home looked like a ballet dancer's...

Part 2 “Summer Delights“

We see the regulated Viennese River and hear about the Wienerwaldsee, mills that stood still for 8 months despite the millstreams and Vienna's first free children's lido.

We go in search of the composers Richard Wagner and Alban Berg, the actors Hans Moser and Hans Albers, the Schönbrunn film company and the first granddaughter of Emperor Franz Josef I, in whose present ancestral home Napoléon II was a guest with his mother, an Austrian archduchess. His educator was not only Burgtheater director but also creatively active as a "music count" here in the Hietzing parish church.

We also get to know the "grandmother-aunt" of Emperor Franz Josef, who as empress had a whoops in one of the beautiful houses here. She survived her husband, who was considered the epitome of Biedermeier love of nature, by 38 years...

We also find out where Joseph Lanner, who is usually mentioned in the same breath as Johann Strauss' father, gave his first concert and where Ferdinand Raimund stayed with his partner, where the king of the waltz himself made his debut and what was meant by a casino in the 19th century.

Last but not least, we find out why it is forbidden for tradition-conscious Austrian sailors to sing "La Pal-oma" and what the success of the Austrian sparkling wine brand Schlumberger indirectly has to do with it.

In the Imperial Furniture Collection, which was founded for the summer retreats of the imperial family, we ask ourselves: what mother would be given a desk? And especially in the Baroque era? Is furnishing an individual selection process as Adolf Loos claimed?

We hear about a daughter of Maria Theresa who shaped an entire era of interior design, a loving empress who used a sleeping chair in the bedroom, what Austria owes to the mother-in-law of "Sisi" and, last but not least, we meet the famous "film Sissi" and personal "movables" of Empress Elisabeth. 

We see places of comfort at the end of the 19th century, brass shoes, a riding chair and 2 imperial canaries of the Biedermeier period, hear about the advantages of an artistic education and the fine little difference, as well as about Viennese tea parties and the 3-class society of furniture from the Biedermeier onwards - and why the Viennese civil service remained arch-conservative for so long.

We clarify what a seat machine is and a knee float and who the Quadratl/square-Hoffmann is. And especially the history of the typical Viennese coffee chair and how this Thonet chair in the Café Museum was actually improved.

Following a break (food/drinks at own cost) in the shady courtyard of the Museum, we continue to explore Vienna's second smallest district, where the composer Joseph Haydn last lived, in search of the Secession, founded among others by the painter of the "Austrian Mona Lisa" and the famous kiss, Gustav Klimt, and hear why this exhibition building was turned into an Indian temple for only 1 night!

We find the famous Wienzeile houses by Otto Wagner and between historicist buildings also other Art Nouveau buildings. We stroll through the Naschmarkt and enjoy the so different scents of this hub of Vienna. 

We see from where the Fliegermarsch from the operetta Der Rittmeister started its triumphal march - and what was then built next to it only 30 years later. And where Josef Strauss, one of the two brothers of the waltz king, was born. 
We explore the famous backyards from the house where the Viennese folk poet Ferdinand Raimund was born and marvel at a church that stood identically behind itself for a year. Questions 😉?
To calm down, we find the cheerful Papagenotor and hear about Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder, as well as Beethoven`s Fidelio.

Last but not least, we admire the "catalogue pieces" at the Academy of Fine Arts, walk past the house on the first floor of which Gustav Klimt's muse used to run the Flöge fashion salon with her sisters (even Coco Chanel copied something from her...) and end up on the roof terrace of the Leopold Museum to enjoy the view over the famous court museums and into the city centre.