Grandiose Vienna was the showpiece of the all-conquering Habsburg dynasty. Monumental edifices line the city centre, world-class museums burst with treasures, white stallions strut their way down mirrored halls and renowned orchestras and angelic choirboys perform in lavish concert halls.

Vienna has plenty of lower-brow pleasures too - walks in the woods, splish-splashing high jinks on the river, slap-up indulgent evenings in its renowned wine taverns. If you can't find something to please you in this generous, opulent, open-armed city, you're ready for the grave.

Cultureheads of every stripe will swoon over Vienna, but music lovers in particular will be in ecstacy. This is the city that nurtured the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Brahms and Mahler, among others. This heritage has an almost physical presence, and music is still a driving force in today's city.

Austria enjoys a temperate Central European climate with four distinct seasons. Summers are hot with cool nights. In Vienna and other low-lying cities temperatures during the day can get uncomfortably hot over July and August. Winters are cold, below freezing in January and February. The ski season in the Alps runs from December to April but the mountains are also popular with hikers and climbers over the summer when the weather is usually warm and bright.

A visit to Vienna is like a stroll through the past, for almost nowhere else is history so close at hand. In the innumerable coffee-houses, often fitted with antique furniture, newspapers are provided free to the customers, a mixture of romantics and managerial types clutching an art-tourist guidebook or holding a mobile phone to their ear, typify the real 'Viennese hodge-podge'.

Locality:

Vienna, the capital of Austria stands imperiously in the Danube Valley, with the rolling hills of the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods) undulating beyond the suburbs in the north and west. The Danube River divides the city into two unequal halves, with the old city centre and most tourist sights south of the river.