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Few cities carry their history as visibly as Vienna. The Habsburg empire may have dissolved more than a century ago, but its ambitions are still legible in every direction: in the monumental Ringstrasse boulevard commissioned by Franz Joseph I, in the gilded interiors of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in the vast formal gardens that spread behind Schönbrunn Palace. This is a capital that was built to impress, and it has never entirely stopped doing so.

The first district, the Innere Stadt, is where most visitors find their bearings. The Stephansdom rises from its centre with the authority of something that has been orienting people since the twelfth century. Radiating outward from it are the streets that connect the Hofburg complex to the opera house, the Naschmarkt to the Graben. Further out, the second district of Leopoldstadt has shifted considerably in recent decades, its former Jewish quarter now home to the Prater and a younger, more informal energy that contrasts with the ceremonial grandeur across the canal. The seventh and eighth districts, Neubau and Josefstadt, carry a different register again: independent bookshops, design studios, and the kind of coffee houses where the afternoon can disappear without anyone minding.