The grandest of Vienna's surviving traditional coffeehouses, occupying the vaulted ground floor of the Palais Ferstel. Café Central opened in 1876 and quickly became a meeting place for the intellectual elite — Freud, Trotsky, Lenin, Adler, and the writers Peter Altenberg and Karl Kraus were all regulars. A papier-mâché figure of Altenberg still sits at the entrance.
The setting is genuinely beautiful: marble floors, Gothic columns, a wooden piano at one end, a vast pastry display at the other. It is also touristy and you may queue. Come for breakfast or in the afternoon for a Verlängerter and a slice of Kardinalschnitte. U-Bahn: Herrengasse.