Café Sperl

Café Sperl is one of the most authentic traditional coffee houses in Vienna. It opened in 1880 in a building by the Ringstrasse architects Gross and Jelinek, and the Sperl family, who took it over in the same year, gave it the name it still carries. Much of the original interior survives, which is why the café is often held up as a model of what a Viennese coffee house should look like.

Step inside and you find high ceilings, large windows, marble-topped tables, Thonet bentwood chairs, velvet banquettes and, at the back, classic billiard tables that are still in use. Newspapers hang on wooden holders for guests to read, and nobody minds if you sit for hours over a single coffee. The café has appeared in several films, most famously Before Sunrise, in which Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's characters spend part of their night in Vienna here, and in A Dangerous Method.

The menu covers the coffee house classics: a Melange or an Einspänner served on a small silver tray with a glass of water, breakfast, simple Viennese dishes and a selection of cakes. Ask about the Sperl-Torte, the house's own cake. Service follows the old coffee-house style, polite and unhurried, so be patient and catch the waiter's eye when you want the bill.

The Sperl suits anyone who wants to experience the coffee house culture recorded in Austria's national inventory of intangible cultural heritage under UNESCO, and it is a pleasant place for solo travellers to read or write. It is quieter than the famous cafés in the old town, though it can fill up at weekends. The café is open Monday to Saturday from 07:00 to 22:00 and on Sundays from 10:00 to 20:00, but it closes on Sundays in July and August.

Gumpendorfer Straße runs up from the Naschmarkt into the sixth district. The café is on the corner with Lehargasse, a few minutes' walk from Kettenbrückengasse and Karlsplatz stations on the U4 and from Museumsquartier on the U2. The Secession, the Theater an der Wien and the Naschmarkt are all nearby, so it is easy to combine a coffee here with a morning at the market.