Stephansplatz / Stephansdom

Welcome to Vienna, and welcome to the very centre of it. You're standing on Stephansplatz, the square the whole first district is measured from, and the first thing to do is simply look up. Above you rises St Stephen's Cathedral — the Stephansdom — eight hundred years of Gothic stone, its south tower climbing more than a hundred and thirty metres into the sky. Look at the roof: hundreds of thousands of glazed tiles laid in a diamond pattern, picking out the Habsburg double-headed eagle and the arms of the city. It is the most photographed roof in Austria, and a very good place to begin.

Here's the idea that will carry us for the next hour and a half. In Vienna, the food and the buildings are not two different stories — they are the same story. The grand cafés are works of architecture and protected pieces of food culture at once; the pastry shops sit in little palaces; even the sausage stand is a kind of street furniture. We're going to walk forward through Vienna's architectural centuries, and eat our way through them as we go.

And Vienna starts eating right here. On this very square, back in the eighteen-eighties, a young man named Josef Manner began selling the pink-wrapped hazelnut wafers that every Austrian still knows by heart — and his flagship shop stands on the square today. Pick one up, or a scoop of Viennese gelato, and come with me.

When you're ready, leave the cathedral's west front and walk straight out along the wide, handsome boulevard ahead of you. This is the Graben.