Vienna hotels

I often meet Austrian friends at the top-floor bar here, taking the lift up to the Chez Bernard restaurant overlooking the city’s 6th district – it’s one of the best hotels in Vienna for connecting to the local scene.

Motto is the passion project of Bernd Schlacher, who runs the canal-side Motto Am Fluss restaurant. For his first hotel he was inspired by Jazz Age Paris and Vienna, commissioning local craftsmen to create Art déco-style lamps and brass fittings, and decorating bedrooms with tropical-bird fabrics.

In the lobby, a cartoon mural of a bellhop and his cheetah roam the walls. It’s romantic but no museum piece: this is a modern Viennese hotel with charcoal lattes and buckwheat blinis on the menu, cocktail kits by the bed, and a standalone bakery that kneads excellent sourdough croissants. There’s even a little wood-lined sauna on the top floor.

This is a place I return to again and again: it’s one of the best hotels in Vienna for location, right opposite the Albertina art gallery and the State Opera. The cosy window seats are like having private boxes in the theatre, for watching Viennese life pass to and fro below.

The complimentary bottles of wine in each room are a pretty good idea, too. And compared to some hotels in the area, which can be a little fusty, this is a bright modern space with Scandinavian-style and mid-century furniture – as you’d expect from a hotel created by the late British design maestro Sir Terence Conran.

It’s one of the top choices for foodies, with an all-day menu in the ground floor brasserie, running from truffled eggs and moules frites to classic Wiener Schnitzel and some rather fancy cakes. For such a central location, it’s very good value for money.

At teatime in Vienna you may think of the Sacher-Torte, the chocolate and apricot cake that’s been the hotel’s sweet signature for almost a century. Every day, tourists queue for a table at the Sacher café. But while its bathrooms have Sacher-Torte shower gel, there’s more to the Sacher – one of the best hotels in Vienna for a traditional stay – than chocolate.

I like the fact it’s still family run, and locals still come here for special occasions. It’s one of the best hotels in Vienna for people-watching – the walls are covered with photographs of the celebrities who’ve visited over the years, from Justin Bieber to the Queen.

Bedrooms are cloaked in velvet drapes, though the ones on the upper two floors are more contemporary. As for the cake, my tip is to save it for breakfast and head to the beautiful Blue Bar for a cocktail instead.

It has some competition, but this is one of the best hotels in Vienna for sheer historic grandeur. You can leave the 21st century at the door – stepping inside the Imperial feels like heading back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The first thing you’ll notice is the imperious marble staircase, followed by the portraits of Franz Joseph and various family members, and the chandeliers and antiques scattered around the bedrooms.

It’s a place where breakfast is worth dressing up for – order the signature egg in a glass. The wood-panelled Opus restaurant, meanwhile, creates still-life dishes from local ingredients. As a harpist serenades guests in the bar, it’s easy to imagine Gustav Mahler sitting in one corner, and former guests such as Alfred Hitchcock and Sophia Loren wandering past.

Yet despite the palatial surroundings, the service is warm and welcoming, as befits a hotel that inspired Wes Anderson’s Grand Hotel Budapest. Pure escapism.