This Viennese Palace Just Got a New, Modern Makeover — and Now You Can Stay There

Vienna is not short on palatial — literally — hotels, and it has gone through a spate of splashy luxury openings over the last five years, bringing brands like Rosewood and Anantara to join stalwarts like Hotel Imperial and Hotel Sacher Wien. But at the end of 2023, a boutique hotel quietly opened inside a pair of the city’s beloved palaces that had taken years to restore.

The positively beautiful Almanac Palais Vienna is the third property from the Almanac hospitality group (the other two are in Barcelona and Prague). It represented something of a homecoming for the owners, the Haselbacher family from Austria, which is perhaps why they spent so many years ensuring the 1871 buildings were properly preserved. The original neo-Baroque facades and heritage marble doorways hark back to the glamor of the original Palais, built for two of the city’s most prominent businessmen: the German-Austrian industrialist Hugo Henckel von Donnersmarck and the textile magnet Baron Friedrich von Leitenberger.

Award-winning Chilean designer Jaime Beriestain was tasked with the property’s restoration, transforming the historic palais into the grand hotel steeped in Viennese heritage. While the façade remains intact, interiors evoke a refined elegance with a palette of rich woods, creamy beiges, and silver and gold hues; sculptural accents; and a rotating collection of paintings and photographs by up-and-coming local artists.

When my family and I entered the soaring marble lobby inside the hotel’s glass-covered atrium, we were instantly wowed. The design choice to preserve the historic molding and still put up a modern, painted screen is an interesting choice, and it works, setting the stage for the hotel’s identity as a historic landmark and a hub of contemporary art. The lobby is so spacious and minimalist that I instantly feared my children running with abandon through it, crashing into the modern sculptures on display in partnership with Galerie bei der Albertina Zetter, but thankfully, they were too exhausted from our red-eye flight to do much damage.

The hotel’s passion for art is evident throughout and is cemented with its latest collection, also done with Galerie bei der Albertina Zetter. The all-Austrian art collection contains works by greats, including Gustav Klimt and Hermann Nitsch, and it is the first time a work by Klimt will ever be on display in a hotel. The drawing, Klimt’s “Sitzende Dame von vorne (Seated Lady Face-On, 1912-1914),” is inside the Palais Suite.

I loved starting each morning with a coffee from the ground-floor third-wave coffee shop Elias and then joining my family to linger over delicious breakfasts inside the airy Donnersmarkt Restaurant before heading out to explore the city for the day. Upon return, we headed downstairs to the spa’s Indoor pool, somewhat of a rarity in the city, to relax in, and the art-inflected bar was ideal for a pre-dinner drink. All in all, Almanac Palais Vienna is an excellent modern addition to the city’s burgeoning hotel roster, bringing it more and more to Europe’s forefront of city destinations beyond Paris and London.

Here’s my review of Almanac Palais Vienna.

The Rooms

Since I was traveling with my husband and two kids, we booked two adjoining rooms. We arrived early in the morning, after taking the red-eye from New York to Vienna, so our rooms weren’t quite ready, but after a couple of hours at the on-site coffee shop and in the park, one of them was ready for us to rest in.

When we walked into the first room, it was so large — with a sitting area and king bed — that I assumed it must be for the grownups. Little did I know that when we would see the second room, a suite, I would feel ridiculous for believing the first room was large. The suite easily spanned more than 1,500 square feet, with a bed so large I think it may have been two kings pushed together. My husband and I joked that we could sleep on it horizontally and still have plenty of extra room; there was a large sitting area and a separate bathroom and closet. The ceiling was a bit low — I learned that as the floors went up, the ceilings got lower — but since neither of us is very tall and they had clearly compensated with more horizontal space, we were thrilled. Both rooms looked down on the hotel’s inner atrium lobby and received sunlight from the opening above.

The hotel has 111 rooms, of which 80 are suites, providing spacious accommodations in a city where that can be scarce. While other parts of the building have preserved neo-Baroque details, the rooms are undeniably modern. Ceilings and some walls feature antiqued gold mirrors, and behind the cream-colored leather headboard is a wood backing wall engraved with a circular pattern. Gray couches are curvy with mod-patterned accent pillows, and the minibar features a shiny red countertop. Bathrooms are covered in Austrian white marble with gold accents, and the rest have gold handles, sconces, lamps, and doors for a luxe, but not over-the-top, poshness.

Food and Drink

On the ground floor with an outdoor area in warm weather, Donnersmarkt Restaurant & Bar is set inside a bright and colorful dining room with a large-scale modern mural along one wall of Vienna’s flora and fauna. The menu features plant-forward Alpine cuisine, like celery confit with a chervil and pistachio béarnaise sauce and oven-roasted and marinated local pumpkin with black radish, honey, and black aioli. The wine list has a local focus, with a selection of biodynamic and organic bottles from vineyards in the hills of Vienna. The Donnersmarkt Bar had a showpiece circular gold bar and maroon velvet seating accented by modern paintings on the walls by artist-in-residence Martin Lukáč.

Vienna has a serious coffee and café culture with a lot of history, so any new coffee shop has to impress. Thankfully, the on-site Elias Coffee Shop has no trouble doing so, with its gleaming white tile, soaring ceilings, and minimalist design. It serves third-wave coffee and local pastries.

Activities and Experiences

In 2024, the hotel started offering several monthly workshops with local experts. These include a gua sha and face yoga workshop, a floral arrangement class, and a four-hour art therapy session with certified holistic art therapist and Create Art Therapy founder Petra Krassnitzer. The sessions promote the flow of energy and stimulate sensory perceptions through a mixture of meditation and creative exercises, such as kneading clay, painting on a canvas, or writing.

The hotel also has several gallery and museum partnerships. One is with the Belvedere Museum, allowing all hotel guests to enjoy a complimentary entrance at Belvedere 21, the museum’s contemporary art building, and guests of the Vienna Art Suite can also enjoy a complimentary entrance to Upper and Lower Belvedere, the museum’s other two sections. Guests can also enjoy exclusive after-hours guided tours of Galerie bei der Albertina, which is inaugurating its new exhibition space, Zetter Projects.

The Spa

Vienna has a bathing culture dating back nearly 2,000 years, and the hotel’s underground two-floor wellness sanctuary pays tribute to that. Open just to guests, the beautiful marble-clad oasis has a glowing 45-foot indoor thermal pool, plus spa and sauna facilities and a fully equipped gym.

Signature treatments include the Viennese Lift & Glow Ritual, a facial using a combination of gua sha and cryo-massage techniques, along with botanical skincare products. Couples can book a nighttime spa experience, where they’ll have the pool, sauna, and steam room all to themselves for three hours, along with a couples massage, sparkling wine, special treats, flowers, and two embroidered robes.

Accessibility

Almanac has four accessible rooms in the hotel: two Almanac Rooms, one Almanac Deluxe, and one Junior Suite. They all feature a wide entrance to the bathroom and to the room, emergency cords and buttons, and an open sink in the bathroom.

Location

The hotel is right on Vienna’s famously elegant Ringstrasse and just across the street from Stadtpark, one of the city’s original public parks. It’s within walking distance from local landmarks like the Vienna State Opera House and the Museum of Applied Arts (The MAK).

How to Get the Most Value Out of Your Stay

Almanac Palais Vienna is part of the Visa Signature Luxury Hotel Collection. Visa cardholders who book through the collection’s website will receive an automatic room upgrade on arrival if available, complimentary breakfast for two, a $25 food and beverage credit, late checkout when available, and VIP guest status.