Cafe Central

The Café Central is one of the most emblematic cafés in Vienna. It is 140 years old, making it a truly historic setting. In the building’s first twenty years, it was home to the Austro-Hungarian Central Bank and the stock exchange on the ground floor, which then moved out in 1876, leaving space for the café to open. The café soon became the centre of Vienna’s bustling café culture. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was frequented by intellectuals such as Sigmund Freud and Franz Kafka, but politicians, such as Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin also visited the café. It gained the nickname “The Chess School” because it was much loved by chess players, who used the building’s first floor for their matches. Later on, the café closed after the Second World War and reopened in the 80s. Today it is a very popular place to visit in Austria’s capital. The scale of the whole building is grandiose; each floor was built with impressively high ceilings. The first floor has an ornate ballroom shaped like the bow of a ship. Inside you can still find the portraits of Emperor Franz Joseph I and his wife Elisabeth of Austria. The ceiling is made of many beautifully decorated vaults. It is quite a typical European café, with many small circular tables, velvet booths by the windows with simple yet stylish chandeliers hanging above. Its wide windows allow natural light to fill the café and let visitors comfortably view the street life of the center.