The Best Hotels in Vienna for Old World Glamour and Avant-Garde Design

"Best for: the hippest speakeasy in town Address: Petersplatz 7, 1010 Vienna, Austria Nearby: Peterskirche Price: Doubles from $655 Right on Petersplatz and almost nudging the copper-green dome of St Peter’s Church, with horse and carriages clip-clopping past, this is a neoclassical ooomph of a building, reimagined and embellished, more than holding its own amid the rococo and Art Nouveau treasures of Vienna. Those statues peering down from surrounding buildings seem to nod their approval. A checkerboard passageway leads to a light-filled atrium with a molecular light installation and all the calm of one of Vienna’s historic courtyards. Off the first-floor check-in—more of a salon, really, with comfortable sofas to lie back on and confess to all your psychoanalyst—is a drawing room painted floor-to-ceiling with ferns and palm leaves and butterfly-bright tropical flowers, so vivid that the occasional jeweled dragonfly may well skim the top of your kaffee und kuchen. Crowning the top of the building’s architectural trifle—and coming as quite a surprise after the hush of the rest of the rooms—is a bustling brasserie with angled windows onto the cityscape and an outdoor grotto planted with a how-on-earth-they-get-it-up-here pine tree. Steps lead up to the lookout bar, an elevated speakeasy with panoramic views that half of Vienna is queuing up for right now. —R.J."