Café Central in Palais Ferstel
Why is it significant?
Push through the revolving door, and the noise of the Herrengasse disappears under a ceiling of vaults and columns that looks more like a cathedral than a café.
Key Facts
| Place | Café Central in Palais Ferstel |
|---|---|
| Address | Herrengasse 14, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.21040, 16.36540 |
| Part of Walk | Melange, Torte and Schnitzel: Vienna's Coffee Houses and the Naschmarkt |
| Generated | Generated |
Push through the revolving door, and the noise of the Herrengasse disappears under a ceiling of vaults and columns that looks more like a cathedral than a café. On your right, a moustached gentleman sits at a little table by the entrance, staring into space... he has been sitting there for decades, because he is made of papier-mâché.
That figure is the poet Peter Altenberg, who practically lived in Café Central around 1900 and, so the story goes, gave it as his postal address. That was the point of a Viennese coffee house. For the price of one coffee you rented a warm room, a marble table, a stack of newspapers on wooden holders, and the right to stay for hours. In 2011 Austria put this culture on its national register of intangible cultural heritage, under the UNESCO convention. A way of sitting still became officially worth protecting.
Legend says coffee came to Vienna after the Ottoman siege of 1683, when a daring messenger called Kolschitzky claimed the sacks of strange beans left behind by the retreating army. It is a lovely tale. The documents, however, give the first coffee licence in 1685 to an Armenian merchant, Johannes Diodato. Vienna has always preferred the better story.
The building itself, Palais Ferstel, was finished in 1860 by Heinrich von Ferstel as a bank and stock exchange, and the café opened inside in 1876. Before the First World War, its regulars reportedly included a Russian exile named Lev Bronstein, better known later as Trotsky, who played chess here. There is a famous, probably polished anecdote: when an Austrian official heard of revolution in Russia, he scoffed, who would make it... Herr Bronstein from the Café Central? Sigmund Freud is often added to the guest list too, with rather less evidence.
The café closed during the Second World War and only came back to life decades later, after the palace was restored. So order a Melange, coffee with foamed milk, and remember you are drinking in a reconstruction of a dream. Then walk out, turn left, and cross the Freyung side towards the Bognergasse, where a merchant opened a shop four hundred years ago.