Palais Ferstel
Venetian-Florentine palace built as a bank, now home to a storied literary coffeehouse.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Palais Ferstel in Vienna opens with a joke Austria-Hungary's foreign minister, Count Leopold Berchtold, made about a regular at the Cafe Central named Bronstein, a man history remembers as Leon Trotsky. You'll hear how the building began as Baron Heinrich von Ferstel's Venetian-Florentine bank and stock exchange before a coffeehouse moved into the ground floor in 1876, drawing writers, doctors and revolutionaries. Listen for the columns under which Freud, Stalin and Tito all once sat, unknown, over a single cup of coffee.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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