Where to Stay, Eat, and Drink in Vienna

"A grande dame that has been operating since 1892, offering the sort of old-world luxury the writer calls 'gloriously retro' — plush rooms (the writer's had a balcony with a view of the Vienna State Opera) and an old-fashioned bar that 'has retained its original paneling and furniture.' The hotel's guest list is presented as a point of pride and eccentricity: Sergei Rachmaninoff, Kim Novak, Ernest Shackleton and even, to the writer's astonishment, Iggy & the Stooges. Small touches include a 'pillow menu' (the writer regretted not trying the Mühldorfer horsehair body cushion), and a vividly observed bar moment where the narrator found himself next to a middle-aged German man 'so extravagantly dissolute-looking that he could only have been an aging rock star,' who indeed turned out to be one, while a dreadlocked young man at the bar ordered a pint in a thick Tyrolian accent." - Travel + Leisure Editors