Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
hotel (you may have noticed the fancy doormen). Many locals complain that the cakes here
have gone downhill, and many tourists are surprised by how dry they are—you really need
that dollop of
Schlagobers
. Still, coffee and a slice of cake here can be €8 well invested for
the historic ambience alone. While the café itself is grotesquely touristy, the adjacent Sacher
Stube has ambience and natives to spare (same prices). For maximum elegance, sit inside.
• Continue past Hotel Sacher. At the end of the street is a small, triangular, cobbled square
adorned with modern sculptures.
Albertinaplatz
As you enter the square, to the right you'll find the
TI
.
On your left, the tan-and-white Neoclassical building with the statue alcoves marks the
tip of the Hofburg Palace—the sprawling complex of buildings that was long the seat of
Habsburg power (we'll end this walk at the palace's center). The balustraded terrace up
top was originally part of Vienna's defensive rampart. Later, it was the balcony of Em-
press Maria Theresa's daughter Maria Christina, who lived at this end of the palace. Today,
her home houses the
Albertina Museum,
topped by a sleek, controversial titanium can-
opy (called the “diving board” by critics). The museum's plush, 19th-century staterooms are
hung with facsimiles from its choice collection of prints, watercolors, and drawings (the ori-
ginals are too light-sensitive to be displayed continuously). An entire floor is dedicated to
the Batliner collection of classical modern art, covering each artistic stage from Impression-
ism to the present day.
Albertinaplatz itself is filled with statues that make up the powerful, thought-provoking
MonumentAgainstWarandFascism,
whichcommemoratesthedarkyearswhenAus-
tria came under Nazi rule (1938-1945).
The statue group has four parts. The split white monument,
The Gates of Violence,
re-
members victims of all wars and violence. Standing directly in front of it, you're at the
gates of a concentration camp. Then, as you explore the statues, you step into a montage of
wartime images: clubs and WWI gas masks, a dying woman birthing a future soldier, and
chained slave laborers sitting on a pedestal of granite cut from the infamous quarry at Mau-
thausen concentration camp (located not far up the Danube from here). The hunched-over
figure on the ground behind is a Jew forced to scrub anti-Nazi graffiti off a street with a
toothbrush. Of Vienna's 200,000 Jews, more than 65,000 died in Nazi concentration camps.
The statue with its head buried in the stone is Orpheus entering the underworld, meant to
remind Austrians (and the rest of us) of the victims of Nazism...and the consequences of not
keeping our governments on track. Behind that, the 1945 declaration that established Aus-
tria's second republic—and enshrined human rights—is cut into the stone.
