We want to start our day with breakfast in a traditional Viennese coffeehouse, the Café Ritter. Therefore, we take the bus to Mariahilferstraße.
Famous writers such as Peter Rosegger, Ludwig Anzengruber, and other artists have frequented this café.
After breakfast at Café Ritter, we take the subway to the Volkstheater at Arthur-Schnitzler-Platz.
From there, it is only a few minutes walk to the Hofburg. At the Schweizerhof we meet Mrs. Ingeborg Gaisbauer. She is an archaeologist at the Department of City Archaeology and guides interested visitors through the current archaeological excavations on behalf of the City of Vienna.
Tours are free of charge and can be found on the Internet. This day, she will take us to a current excavation in the castle in front of the Swiss Gate, and we will experience how documentation and research are carried out here.
The current topic is a water conduit connected to the previous buildings, namely the noble houses of the Hofburg. Registration for the guided tours is required at the Department of City Archaeology or the Wien Museum.
After our excursion into the past, we continue to Josefsplatz and admire the entrance gate of the Palais Pallavicini before we ascend the stairs to the Baroque State Hall of the Austrian National Library on the other side of the square.
The Austrian National Library is the central scientific library of the Republic of Austria.
We then visit the Augustinian Church, which is also accessible from Josefsplatz. Court weddings took place in the Augustinian Church. The most famous are the weddings of Archduchess Maria Theresa to Franz of Lorraine and Emperor Franz Joseph I to Elisabeth (Sisi) of Bavaria.
The hearts of 54 Habsburgs are kept in the Habsburg Heart Crypt behind the Loretto Chapel.
Passing the Albertina with the Albrecht Fountain and the Palmenhaus, we reach the Kunsthistorisches Museum with its imposing monument to Maria Theresa in the middle of the leafy square.
The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna (KHM) is one of the most important museums in the world. It originates from the collections of the Habsburgs.
The building was commissioned by Emperor Franz Joseph I.
Today, the collection consists mainly of ancient Egyptian and Oriental objects, coins, sculptures, musical instruments, and a picture gallery.
Our visit was not long enough to see everything, so we skipped the picture gallery.
We then take a tour of the MuseumsQuartier. There are a number of individual museums here, such as the Mumok, the Leopold Museum, the Kunsthalle Wien, the Museum of Architecture, the Centre for Contemporary Dance & Performance, a theater for young people, the ZOOM Children’s Museum and a stage for music and performing arts.
The roof terrace of the Leopold Museum offers a magnificent view of the city.
Once again, we head into Mariahilferstraße. We pass the Lamarr construction site. A shopping mall with a public roof garden is to be built here. After the insolvency of Benko’s Sigma Group, an investor took over the project.
We enjoy the green scenery of Mariahilferstrasse again and reach Raimundhof, the birthplace of the Austrian actor Ferdinand Raimund, at number 45. A beautiful but inconspicuous entrance leads to ‘freiwilliger Durchgang, a voluntary passage.
Voluntary passageways are crossings between parallel streets that lead through the backyards of different houses. They are open to the public and house various shops and cafés.
There are quite a few of them in Vienna. The extension of the Raimundhof is the Stiegengasse, a steep staircase leading to the Gumpendorfer Straße.
We return to our Hotel after having dined at an Inn, as we are leaving for Budapest, Hungary the next day.
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