From the Market to the Big Wheel: A Full Day Across Vienna on Foot

Vienna rewards a visitor who walks it from one side to the other. The old town inside the Ring is small, but the city's story spills out beyond it: to the market stalls along the Wien river, to the grand nineteenth-century boulevard that replaced the walls, and out east to the green expanse of the Prater.

This walk crosses the city in a single day. It begins in the morning at the Naschmarkt, takes in two of Vienna's great Baroque interiors, follows the Ringstraße past the theatre and the university quarter, cuts back through the medieval centre to the cathedral, and then heads east to the city's most playful apartment block before ending at the Giant Ferris Wheel, ideally as the light goes.

It is built for a first visit. You will see a market, a church, a library, a theatre, a monastery, a cathedral, a museum, a housing estate and a fairground ride: Vienna from the emperors' commissions to the people's pleasures. Pick two or three places to go inside and enjoy the rest from the street; trying to do every interior in one day would leave no time to walk.

Start the day at the Naschmarkt, the long open-air market that runs along the Wienzeile on top of the vaulted-over Wien river. A market has stood on this spot for a long time, and the name Naschmarkt came into use around 1820; the first pavilions over the river followed in 1902.

Today the rows of stalls sell fruit and vegetables, herbs and spices, cheese, bread and pastries, meat and fish, while small restaurants between them serve everything from sushi and kebab to Viennese pancakes. Walk one row up and the other back, buy something for later, and have breakfast at one of the counters. On Saturdays a flea market spreads out along the Wienzeile beside it, a tradition since 1977. The stalls are closed on Sundays, when only the restaurants open, so on a Sunday this stop becomes a coffee rather than a market.

Head east to Karlsplatz and the green dome of the Karlskirche. In 1713, a year after the last great plague epidemic in Vienna, Emperor Charles VI vowed to build a church to Saint Charles Borromeo, the Counter-Reformation saint revered as a healer of plague victims. Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach won the competition and began work in 1716; after his death in 1723 his son Joseph Emanuel completed it in 1737.

The façade is a manifesto in stone. A Greek temple portico sits between two giant columns wound with spiral reliefs of Borromeo's life, modelled on Trajan's Column in Rome and meant to recall both the pillars of Solomon's Temple and the Pillars of Hercules, the emblem of Habsburg power. Inside, look up: the oval dome is painted with a fresco by Johann Michael Rottmayr and Gaetano Fanti showing the saint interceding for the city, supported by the Virgin Mary.

From Karlsplatz walk north past the Opera and the Albertina to Josefsplatz, a quiet square inside the Hofburg. Here is the State Hall of the Austrian National Library, the Prunksaal, the old court library of the Habsburgs. Construction began in 1721 under the same Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach who designed the Karlskirche, and his son finished it after 1723, so the two morning stops are a pair.

The hall is lined floor to ceiling with leather-bound volumes and galleries. Daniel Gran painted the ceiling fresco, whose central dome shows the apotheosis of Charles VI, the emperor who commissioned both buildings; his marble statue stands at the centre of the hall among statues of other Habsburg rulers by Peter and Paul Strudel. Among its treasures is the library of Prince Eugene of Savoy, around 15,000 volumes. If you go inside only once today, this is a strong candidate: it is one of the most remarkable rooms in the city.

Walk out through the Hofburg's courtyards to Heldenplatz and cross the Volksgarten, the People's Garden, to reach the Ring. Facing the City Hall across the road is the Burgtheater, Austria's national theatre. Empress Maria Theresa founded it in 1741 so that she would have a theatre beside her palace; in the old house beside the palace three Mozart operas had their premieres, among them The Marriage of Figaro in 1786, and Beethoven's First Symphony was first performed there in 1800.

The company moved into this building on the Ring in 1888. It was designed by Gottfried Semper and Karl von Hasenauer, and the young Gustav Klimt, his brother Ernst and Franz von Matsch painted frescoes on the history of the theatre for its interior. The building was badly damaged in 1945 and rebuilt between 1953 and 1955. Its curved front is best seen from the Rathauspark side of the Ring.

Continue north along the Ring past the main building of the University to the twin spires of the Votivkirche. On 18 February 1853 the young Emperor Franz Joseph was attacked with a knife by the Hungarian nationalist János Libényi; the blow was deflected by his collar. His brother, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, launched a campaign to build a church of thanksgiving, and the design competition was won by Heinrich von Ferstel, then just 26.

Built between 1856 and 1879 in the neo-Gothic style, the church was dedicated on the silver wedding anniversary of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth. Its towers rise to 99 metres. Inside, look for the Renaissance tomb of Nicholas, Count of Salm,, who defended Vienna during the Turkish siege of 1529; it stands in the baptistry. The pale sandstone needs constant care, and restoration has gone on for years, so expect scaffolding on part of it.

Cross back inside the Ring at Schottentor and follow Schottengasse to the Freyung, a broad, irregular square lined with palaces. On its north side stands the Schottenkirche, the church of the Schottenstift. Duke Henry II of Austria, known as Jasomirgott, founded the abbey in 1155 and brought in Irish Benedictine monks; in medieval German the Irish were called Schotten, which is where the name comes from. Henry himself was buried here in 1177.

The church you see is Baroque: after a tower collapsed in 1638 it was rebuilt by Andrea d'Allio the Younger and Silvestro Carlone. The abbey's museum keeps the Schottenmeisteraltar from around 1470, a late Gothic altarpiece valued for its painted views of medieval Vienna. After a long morning, this is also a natural point to break for lunch around the Freyung.

From the Freyung, walk east through the lanes of the old town to Stephansplatz and Saint Stephen's Cathedral. Two of Vienna's existing walks start here; on this one it is the turning point of the day, the place where the walk leaves the court's Vienna behind and heads for the city's east.

If you have already been inside, spend the time on details you may have missed. The roof is covered in 230,000 glazed tiles; on the south side above the choir they form a double-headed eagle, the emblem of the Habsburgs, and on the north side the arms of the City of Vienna and of the Republic of Austria. The south tower stands about 136 metres tall. The main entrance on the west front is the Giant's Door, flanked by the two Roman Towers, and beneath the church the catacombs hold the remains of more than 11,000 people; they can be visited on a tour.

Leave the cathedral along the Wollzeile and you come out on the eastern stretch of the Ring at the MAK, the Museum of Applied Arts. It was founded in 1863 as the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, and Heinrich von Ferstel, the architect of the Votivkirche, designed its Neo-Renaissance building, which opened in 1871 as the first museum on the Ringstraße.

The collection is about how Vienna lived and furnished itself: furniture including bentwood chairs by Thonet, Venetian and Bohemian glass, porcelain, and the holdings of the Wiener Werkstätte, the design workshop of Vienna around 1900. Gustav Klimt's sketches for the Stoclet Frieze are also here. It is a good afternoon stop if you want one museum on this walk, and the Stadtpark is just across the Ring for a rest.

Cross the Wien river into the Landstraße district and follow the quieter residential streets to Kegelgasse and the Hundertwasserhaus. After a day of palaces and churches it comes as a jolt. Built between 1983 and 1985 to the ideas of the painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser, with the architect Josef Krawina, it is a municipal housing block of 53 apartments with uneven floors, irregular windows, patchwork colours and about 250 trees and bushes growing on its terraces and roof.

It is still a home, owned by the city and rented out like any other public housing, so the flats, courtyard and terraces are closed to visitors. Look at it from the street and the small square in front. Across the road, the Hundertwasser Village is a small arcade of shops and a café that is open to the public.

From Kegelgasse head north across the Danube Canal into Leopoldstadt and on to the Prater, the city's great park and amusement area. At its entrance turns the Giant Ferris Wheel, the Riesenrad, built in 1897 for the golden jubilee of Emperor Franz Joseph by the British naval officer Walter Basset.

It stands 64.75 metres high. It was built with 30 cabins; after severe damage in the Second World War only 15 were put back. From 1920 until 1985 it was the tallest Ferris wheel in the world still standing, and it had its most famous moment on screen in the 1949 film The Third Man. A slow turn in one of its wooden cabins is the best way to end the day: from the top you can pick out the spire of Saint Stephen's and trace much of the route you have just walked.

Walked in this order, the day tells Vienna's story from the top down. The morning belongs to the Habsburgs at their most confident: Charles VI's plague church and his library, both by the Fischer von Erlachs. The middle of the day follows the Ringstraße, where the nineteenth-century city put its theatre, its university and its votive church on display, and then slips back through the medieval core by way of a twelfth-century abbey to the cathedral that has been the city's centre all along.

The afternoon turns outward and becomes more playful: a museum about how people furnished their lives, a housing block that refuses straight lines, and finally a fairground wheel built for an emperor's jubilee that became everyone's view of the city. By the time the cabin reaches the top, you will have crossed Vienna from one side to the other on foot.