Vienna Travel Guide

Most visitors to Vienna will know of the many historic museums, palaces and homes of the famous. In addition to the typical tours and ways to see the city, there are a couple of rather unusual methods of getting to know Vienna and its culture:

Tour One: Wander Through Zentralfriedhof

In a city where there are still people who save long and hard to give themselves a perfect burial, it's hardly surprising that one of Europe's biggest cemeteries can be found here. Nowhere else can you see such visible proof of Vienna's proverbial morbidity than in the Zentralfriedhof. Opened in 1874, it now has a bigger "population" than the city of Vienna itself—more than 2.5 million and as many as 333,000 graves alone can be found in a small area covering 2.5 square meters. For many Viennese, a grave here is a measure of success; the more pompous the funeral and grave, the better known the person was during their lifetime.

The Viennese do not consider this cemetery in any way an eerie place to best be avoided, but see it as a huge park. A walk under the tree canopies surrounding the graves and mausoleums is a sure-fire way to make time fly on Sunday afternoons, as there is a lot to discover.

Gloomier in November, warmer in May, cool and shady in August, every time of year has different highlights. The busiest time is of course All Saints' and All Souls' Days, when the Vienna transport authorities even have to run extra trams on the No. 71 and 72 lines to prevent overcrowding.

The cemetery can be reached in 30-45 minutes from Schwarzenbergplatz on tram No. 71 or from the Schlachthausgasse on tram No. 72. If you look out the window on the way, you'll see the tenement blocks of Simmering rushing past; where the houses stop, the cemetery begins. The cemetery itself has three tram stops (1st, 2nd and 3rd gates), two S-Bahn stops and its own bus which departs every thirty minutes. The first tram stop (1. Tor/1st gate) will take you to the Jewish section, the second stop (2.Tor/ 2nd gate) to the main entrance and the third stop to the Protestant and new Jewish sections.

A tour should ideally be begun from the main entrance with its monumental art nouveau gates. As you get closer to the central church in the direction of the Hauptgasse, you'll pass a row of Group 32A graves where the cemetery's most famous musicians rest in peace—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. The latter two were re-interred here from the Währinger cemetery and it's said that Anton Bruckner even touched the two corpses before he was taken away by officials. The graves of Christoph Willibald Gluck and the Empress Maria Theresa are nearby. The Empress died in 1779 after refusing to heed advice from doctors not to drink any more alcohol. Johannes Brahms and the entire Strauss family also have their last resting places here.

The honorary graves opposite the Hauptgasse, Group 14A, include some of the most unusual graves of high Viennese society, dating from the turn of the century. The graves of the politicians Karl Renner, Julius Raab, Leopold Figl, Bruno Kreisky, the composer Arnold Schönberg and the two writers Franz Werfel and Peter Altenberg are located just beside these.

While maintaining a Catholic section, the cemetery also caters to other faiths. There is a Protestant cemetery, accessible by the 4th Gate, as well as a small Russian Orthodox resting place. The biggest non-Catholic sections are most certainly the two Jewish cemeteries. The older of the two, created in 1863 and accessible through the 1st Gate, was largely destroyed by the Nazis during Kristallnacht, yet around 60,000 graves still remain intact. Prominent graves here include those of the Rothschild family and that of the author Arthur Schnitzler. The second Jewish cemetery was built in 1917 and is still in use today.

Tour Two: A Walk Through Grinzing

All the Viennese have a firm favorite amongst the taverns serving the latest local wine, but they would rather keep the address to themselves. If you have friends in Vienna, you might be lucky enough to be taken along to such a place, but for unaccompanied guests, Grinzing is the place to be. Dozens of specialist wine-serving establishments are located all along the sand and cobbled streets and Grinzinger Straße. All offer their hundreds of guests an extensive buffet as well as live music and singing.

Originally, such pubs were somewhat simple, intimate, quiet and cheap, and only sold local wines. Today, however, they are besieged by coach-loads of tourists and are fully commercialistic operations. To protect the centuries-old traditions, it became law that real Heurige (Viennese wine taverns) should display a green pine branch and a notice with "Ausg'steckt" written on it in their entrance halls during the few months of the year when they are open. Another means of identifying a true high-quality establishment is a notice displaying the words "Original Wiener Heuriger" (Original Viennese wine tavern).

On a walk through the vineyards, either along the Schreiberbach or over in Kahlenbergdorf, you can follow in the footsteps of Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven, who were inspired by the then undisturbed natural surroundings of the area. Gustav Mahler's last resting place is the Grinzinger cemetery, right next to the final tram stop of Line 38. Mahler, who was responsible for the Staatsoper (State Opera), converted to Catholicism at the beginning of his career in order to be accepted by the anti-Semitic Viennese Establishment. His modern gravestone was commissioned by his widow Alma Mahler-Werfel, who herself is buried nearby. Other well-known "residents" here include the one-armed pianist, Paul Wittgenstein (brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein), as well as the author Heimito von Doderer.

In nearby Heiligenstadt, easily reached on Bus no. 38A from Grinzing, there are two houses in which the restless Ludwig van Beethoven spent some time: the Beethovenhaus (Pfarrplatz 2) and the Heiligenstädter-Testament-Haus (Probusgasse 6), in which he wrote his famous Last Will and Testament and confessed his deafness to the world. Both houses are open daily.

Tour Three: A Very Special Tour!

If you don't make it to every spot, then send your teddy bear to Teddytours. His picture will be taken at all the spots of your choice and he'll come back home safe with a full album of funny pictures! Like in the French film where Amélie's gnome journeys across Vienna!2008-08-02T07:29:22.000 94