Palais Ferstel

Informazioni su Palais Ferstel

Palais Ferstel is a mid-nineteenth-century palace between Freyung and Herrengasse in Vienna's Innere Stadt, built between 1856 and 1860 to a design by architect Heinrich von Ferstel, after whom it is named. It was built to house two institutions at once: the Austrian National Bank's predecessor and the Vienna Stock Exchange, which operated from the building until it moved to its own dedicated exchange building in 1877.

Today the palace's public identity rests less on its original banking function than on what runs inside it: the Ferstel Passage, a glazed shopping arcade connecting Freyung and Herrengasse, and Café Central, one of Vienna's most storied historic coffeehouses, both open to anyone walking in off the street.

Ferstel also designed the Votivkirche near the university around the same period, and Palais Ferstel is generally read as his major secular commission from that decade — an Italian Renaissance Revival style with round-arched windows and a rusticated stone ground floor, distinct from the Gothic Revival he used for the church.

Controllato 2026-08-20 · Fonte

Cosa c'è dentro

The Ferstel Passage runs straight through the building's ground floor, lined with shops under a glass roof, with the Donaubrunnen — a fountain with sculpted figures personifying the Danube and its tributaries — at its centre. Café Central occupies a grand arcaded hall off the passage, with high vaulted ceilings and marble columns; it is famous for the writers and revolutionaries said to have used it as a regular haunt in the early twentieth century, Leon Trotsky among the names most repeated, alongside Peter Altenberg, whose life-size seated statue sits by the entrance today.

The upper floors of the palace, which held the bank and exchange halls, are used today for private events and are not part of the public route through the building. The Freyung side of the palace fronts one of Vienna's oldest squares, itself a former market place with its own fountain, the Austria-Brunnen, standing separately just outside the building rather than inside it.

Controllato 2026-08-20 · Fonte

Quanto tempo dedicare

Fifteen minutes to walk the passage and see the fountain; an hour or more for a proper coffee and cake at Café Central, which is the reason most visitors come. Add time on top of that for the queue at busy hours, which can outlast the coffee itself, particularly for a table rather than a stand at the counter.

Controllato 2026-08-20 · Fonte

Stagione e folla

Café Central draws a queue most of the day, worse around midday and early afternoon; going soon after opening reduces the wait. The passage itself is quiet at any hour and open whenever its shops are. Evenings tend to be calmer at the café once the daytime tour-group traffic through the passage has thinned out.

Controllato 2026-08-20 · Fonte

Biglietti

The passage is free to walk through at any time it is open. Café Central is a working café, not a museum, so entry has no fee — a table costs whatever is ordered from the menu, and current prices are not reproduced here. Café Central traditionally runs live piano music at certain hours, and whether a cover charge applies alongside the menu prices on a given visit is not reproduced here; check with staff on arrival.

Controllato 2026-08-20 · Fonte

Come arrivare

On Freyung and Strauchgasse, a short walk from Herrengasse U-Bahn station (U3) or from the Schottentor tram stop on the Ringstrasse. The passage has entrances on both Freyung and Herrengasse, so it can be walked as a shortcut between the two streets rather than as a there-and-back detour.

Controllato 2026-08-20 · Fonte

A cosa prestare attenzione

Café Central's queue is the main friction point and can run well past the door at peak hours; there is no reservation system for walk-in seating. The palace's grand upper rooms, sometimes seen in event photography, are not open to a casual visitor — the passage and the café are the whole of the publicly accessible building. The passage's shops keep separate hours from the café, so an evening visit may find the arcade largely closed even while the café stays open. Freyung also hosts occasional markets and events that spill into the square directly outside the palace's main entrance, which can make the approach busier than the passage itself on those dates.

Controllato 2026-08-20 · Fonte

Fotografia

The Ferstel Passage's glass roof and the Donaubrunnen fountain, shot straight down the arcade's length, is the building's most repeatable image regardless of the time of day, since the glass roof diffuses the light evenly whatever the weather outside. Café Central's arcaded interior, with the writer Peter Altenberg's seated statue by the door, is a second, permitted subject inside — check with staff before photographing other guests at their tables, and expect the pace of service to slow noticeably around a table where a camera comes out.

Controllato 2026-08-20 · Fonte

Dov'è

Nelle vicinanze

Collegamenti esterni

• Visualizza su Wikidata