Ferstel Passage

This guide to the Ferstel Passage in Vienna opens with a Habsburg count's dismissive joke about a chess-playing regular at Cafe Central, a Russian exile named Bronstein, and traces how that offhand remark aged. You'll walk the vaulted stone corridor architect Heinrich von Ferstel built around 1860 as part of a bank and stock exchange, and hear about the poet Peter Altenberg, who used the cafe next door as his home address and is said to have settled at least one bill with a poem on a napkin. Look for the bronze mermaid fountain in the passage's courtyard before you reach the story's turn.