Coffee Houses of Vienna

Vienna’s coffee houses have become an integral way of life for the Viennese.   They were once described as the city’s ‘public living rooms’, where the purchase of a single coffee welcomes you to stay for the day.

The origins of the coffee house date back to 1683, when Turkish invaders were forced to flee the town, by allied forces of the Habsburg army. In departing, they left behind sacks of small brown beans. These were at first thought to be camel feed, but were passed to an officer named Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, who began to experiment with the small pellets and in doing so created the country’s premier beverage. He opened Vienna’s first coffee house shortly afterwards.

The coffee houses in the images are, - Café Central, which opened in 1876 and was frequented by Sigmund Freud, -  Café Demel, which dates from 1888, when the Demel brothers opened a confectionary and was the meeting place of the aristocracy, -  Café Landtmann, which opened in 1873, at the time it was the largest local café, -  Café Sperl, which opened in 1880 and is largely unchanged since that time, and Café Sacher, which is famous for its Sacher-Torte, created in 1832 for Prince von Metternich, made with chocolate, apricot jam and whipped cream.