140 Years of the Grand Hotel Wien

June 23rd, 2010

Vienna's first luxury hotel

When the Grand Hotel Wien opened its doors in 1870, it was Vienna's first luxury hotel and the first of the famous hotels on the prestigious Ringstrasse boulevard.

After four years of construction, originally as a maison meublée based on a design by the architect Carl Tietz, its owner Anton Schneider converted it from a private house to a hotel as soon as it was completed. It was the Habsburg Empire's first hotel to have the word "GRAND" in its name - an attribute it rightly deserved since it set entirely new standards in the then booming city of Vienna.

Offering far more than comfortable beds and wellappointed rooms, it featured restaurants, a coffee house, a bar, salons, an in-house laundry service, a carpentry workshop, and stables for guests' horses. The hotel was also situated in an exclusive location: a year before its opening, the new imperial Opera House, today the Vienna State Opera, opened only 200 meters from the hotel. The nearby Musikverein concert hall was inaugurated in 1870 as well.