The Vienna State Opera keeps back several hundred standing places for every performance and sells them on the night, at the door, for the price of two coffees. The queue for them forms on the Operngasse side about ninety minutes before the curtain, the tickets go on sale eighty minutes before, and a decent proportion of the people in it are students who do this every week.

That is the anchor of an evening. The day in front of it can be built at walking pace, because central Vienna is small and flat and almost everything worth the time sits inside the Ringstrasse.

Stephansdom, where the two towers are not the same visit

The cathedral’s nave is free to enter, but a barrier crosses it a few metres in, and everything beyond it is ticketed. Most visitors walk to the barrier, look, and leave, which is a reasonable ten minutes if the towers are what you came for.

The south tower is a climb: 343 steps up a stone spiral, no lift, ending in a cramped watchman’s room with windows on four sides. The north tower has a lift, no climb, and takes you to the Pummerin, the bell cast in 1951 from the metal of its predecessor, which fell during the fire of 1945. They cost different amounts and give different views, and the guides that say “climb the tower” rarely mention there are two.

Look up at the roof from the square. The tiles were relaid after the war in a zigzag of green, white and gold, and on the south face they form the double-headed eagle of the empire.

The Hofburg, and choosing one palace rather than three

Vienna has a Habsburg problem for the one-day visitor: the Hofburg in the centre, Schonbrunn in the suburbs and the Belvedere to the south are each a half day, and doing two of them well is already ambitious.

Take the Hofburg if the interest is the family. The Sisi Museum, the Imperial Apartments and the Silver Collection are sold on one ticket and lead into each other, and the Sisi rooms are unusually honest about the empress: the obsessive exercise, the diet, the refusal to be photographed after her thirties.

Take Schonbrunn if the interest is the setting. The palace interiors are timed-entry and come in two lengths, the shorter Imperial Tour of 22 rooms and the Grand Tour of 40, but the park behind is free and open from early morning, and the walk up to the Gloriette gives you the view along the whole axis back to the city. The zoo inside the grounds, founded in 1752, is the oldest still operating in the world.

Schonbrunn is on U-Bahn line U4, about fifteen minutes from Karlsplatz.

The coffee house, which is a place to sit and not a place to drink

Viennese coffee house culture is on the UNESCO list of intangible heritage, entered in 2011, and the listing describes it as somewhere people spend time rather than money. That is the operating instruction. One cup buys the table for as long as you want it, newspapers on wooden rods are free to take, and nobody will bring the bill until asked.

Order a melange, which is the local drink: espresso, hot milk, milk foam, in a small cup. The word “Viennese coffee” appears on no menu in Vienna. A glass of tap water arrives beside it without being ordered, and refusing it confuses people.

Cafe Central and Cafe Sacher have queues outside and prices to match, and both are genuine historic rooms. Cafe Sperl, Cafe Prückel and Cafe Hawelka are the same institution without the coach parties.

Lunch at the Naschmarkt, and the Saturday difference

The Naschmarkt runs along the Wienzeile for about half a mile, trades Monday to Saturday, and shuts on Sundays and public holidays. The city end is restaurants, the far end is produce, and the ratio has shifted towards restaurants every year for a decade.

Saturday adds the flea market at the far end, which is a serious one: furniture, records, old cameras, genuine junk, starting around six in the morning and thinning out by two in the afternoon.

One caution on the food stalls facing the street. Several run the trick of putting unordered dishes on the table and charging for them, and prices are frequently not displayed. Ask before anything arrives.

An evening: opera, or the wine that is not sold anywhere else

If the opera queue does not appeal, Vienna has a second evening habit that is entirely its own. The heuriger is a tavern licensed to sell only the wine made by its own owner from its own vineyard, and the ones in Grinzing, Nussdorf and Neustift am Walde sit on the northern edge of the city where the vines actually grow, inside the city limits.

They are seasonal by law and by custom. A green pine branch hung over the door means the place is open; food is bought by weight at a counter rather than ordered from a menu; the young wine of the year, Sturm, appears only in September and October and is still fermenting when it is sold.

Tram 38 from Schottentor reaches Grinzing in about twenty minutes, and the last one back runs shortly after midnight.

Two things the city gives away

Vienna’s tap water arrives by two mountain pipelines built in 1873 and 1910, running from springs in the Rax and Schneeberg ranges under gravity alone, with no pumping. It is legal, encouraged and normal to drink it, there are public drinking fountains across the centre, and buying bottled water here is a straightforward waste of money.

The other is the Zentralfriedhof, twenty minutes out on tram 71. Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Strauss and Schoenberg are buried in one honorary group in section 32A, Falco is a short walk away, and the whole thing is free, enormous and full of deer at dusk.

For a longer central European run, Prague is four hours north by rail and Budapest two and a half east.

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