When the staff of Café Schwarzenberg open up in the early morning, they’re conducting a ritual that began on the premises over 150 years ago.
- First opened in the 1860s and once the haunt of architect and designer, Josef Hoffmann
- Ticks all the boxes for a traditional Viennese coffee house
- Lovely views of late 19th century architecture out the windows
- See also:
Named for a prince
(I do love coffee house fonts)
Back in the early 1860s, Abraham Lincoln took up the office of President in the USA, and civil war broke out a couple of weeks later.
Around about the same time across the ocean in Vienna, Johanna and Raimund Hochleitner opened a coffee house in a newly-constructed town palais. The location? On the Kärntner Ring, part of the impressive and prestigious Ringstrassen boulevard created at the time.
And so Café Schwarzenberg was born.
To be fair, the coffee house only got its current name at the start of the next century.
The name change seems almost inevitable, given the close proximity of Schwarzenbergstraße, Schwarzenbergplatz and the Schwarzenberg monument…all named after Karl Philipp, Prince of (surprise!) Schwarzenberg.
(The Prince earned all these city tributes through his military exploits against Napoleon at the 1813 Battle of Leipzig.)
(The building when it was new, photographed sometime around 1865 by Andreas Groll; Wien Museum Inv.-Nr. 93021/132; excerpt reproduced with permission under the terms of the CC0 licence)
Given its age, the coffee house remains a living monument to the Ringstrassen cafés that originally catered to 19th-century Viennese society.
The decor inside has changed since then, of course, not least because the Russians used the insides for target practice during the post-WWII allied occupation of Vienna.
Dark hardwood panelling lines today’s Café Schwarzenberg, topped with a tiled ceiling and glass chandeliers. Worn wood and cracked leather seats (spotless in their old age) help give it a particularly warm resonance for the colder months; an outdoor section has seating for sunnier seasons.
Look closely and you’ll find patterned wall coverings, too, that echo those you see in other historical places like the Albertina art museum.
The overall impression is very much in the honourable tradition of the Viennese coffee house, right down to the upturned spoon on the glass of water that comes with your coffee.
That particular tradition stems from the days of silver spoons, when hosts wanted to make sure their guests saw the hallmark on the cutlery.
(Outdoor seating fronts the main entrance)
Pick the right seat, and you enjoy a view up Schwarzenbergplatz to the Hochstrahlbrunnen fountain and giant Russian memorial.
Or look across to the Erzherzog-Ludwig-Viktor-Palais, built in the same decade that the Hochleitners started serving coffee. It now houses a theater.
If you use your time inside to make a few sketches on a pad, you’re following in the footsteps of a frequent visitor to Café Schwarzenberg: the great architect and designer, Josef Hoffmann (1870 – 1956).
I used my hour or so to edit a novel, inspired by a fine Wiener Melange and a slice of Sachertorte from the extensive collection of cakes.
The café’s not a particularly literary location, mind, or a home to great philosophers, but it is a time-honoured representative of what it means to be a coffee house in traditional Vienna.
A place to ponder the scars and memories left over the past 150 years of city history, admire the surrounding architecture, and gird your loins with a Fairtrade organic cappuccino or traditional Viennese meal.
(The café runs down two sides of the lower floor of the building)
Café Schwarzenberg is not the only traditional business in the palais building. The other side houses the Internationale Apotheke, a pharmacy first established around 1870.
And if you want to take the luxury level up a few notches, cross the Ring to the five-star Hotel Imperial, which has its own café and even its own cake. All sorts of historical personalities have stayed there: from Hitler to Hitchcock.
Reaching Café Schwarzenberg
Given its location alongside the Ring boulevard, getting to the café is easy.
Subway: the coffee house sits roughly half way between the Karlsplatz (U1, U2 and U4) and Stadtpark (U4) subway stations
Tram/bus: As the photo above shows, a bus stops right outside: the 2A line. Trams 2, D and 71 all stop close by, too (Schwarzenbergplatz)
Address: Kärntner Ring 17, 1010 Vienna | Website