"Time Out" Vienna (Paperback, 3rd Revised edition)

Despite being a magnet for nostalgia trippers and Habsburg flends, there's much more than chocolate cake and waltzes lurking behind the porticoes of Vienna's grandiloquent Baroque palaces and in the mezzanines of its elegant nineteenth century apartment buildings. In particular Vienna's vibrant art scene was given a contemporary joit with the arrival of the MuseumsQuartler arts complex, and further enriched by the renovation of the world famous Albertina graphic art gallery and the reopening of the Palais Liechtenstein in 2004. With a quarter of a million fewer inhabitants than at the turn of the 20th century, the city is currently a spacious, fluid, multicultural arena whose enviable standard of living is bolstered by local commitment to investing in public transport, leisure and cultural activities and hi-tech industry. With the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth in 2006, Vienna marshalls one of its most enduring icons to consolidate its status as the capital of classical music while inviting maverick theatre director Peter Sellars to give a contemporary spin to the concepts underlying the composer's work.