Its coffeehouse culture is something Vienna is famous for. One of the reasons is Café Museum, a traditional café on the corner of Operngasse and Karlsplatz in the first district. Prices are above-average, the waiters wear tailcoats and typically ignore new guests for a short while before serving them. They are aware of the illustrious past of the café that opened its doors in 1899. The interior was designed by the Austrian-Czechoslovakian architect Adolf Loos, renowned for his vehement opposition to that times’ predominant form of art in Vienna, the Art Nouveau. Contrary to artists like Gustav Klimt and Otto Wagner, Loos abdicated elaborate frets and ornaments and preferred a sparse, functional architecture that made him become a pioneer of modernity. Café Museum’s furnishing was so unadorned that guests soon nicknamed it Café Nihilism. Nonetheless the café quickly developed into a meeting point of artists, writers and journalists, with the likes of Elias Canetti, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Joseph Roth and Robert Musil all having been regulars. Like most traditional coffeehouses Café Museum somehow conserved the old flair and remains a good spot to hang out for a few hours, have some coffee and read a book written by one of the guests a century earlier.

cafe-museum.at