Café Central
A Viennese coffeehouse that opened in 1876 beneath the former stock-exchange hall of the Palais Ferstel.
Café Central opened in 1876 on the ground floor of the Palais Ferstel in Vienna’s Innere Stadt, at Herrengasse 14. The block was designed by Heinrich von Ferstel for the Austrian National Bank, begun in 1855 and completed by 1860, and it also housed a stock-exchange floor and a bazaar.
Its place in literary history belongs to the years around 1900. When Café Griensteidl closed in 1897, some of its regulars, among them writers of the Jung-Wien circle such as Peter Altenberg, moved to Café Central. Adolf Loos and Stefan Zweig are also named among its patrons, and the café was nicknamed the “Chess school” because chess players used its first floor.
Beyond that, the café’s reputation has gathered legends. Stories of celebrated political visitors, Leon Trotsky among them, circulate widely, but they rest on popular anecdote rather than firm documentation, and are kept apart here from the recorded history.
- Location
- Vienna, Austria
- Address
- Herrengasse 14, Innere Stadt
- Opened
- 1876
- Building
- Palais Ferstel, designed by Heinrich von Ferstel
Editor’s Selection is an editorial choice by Sunjae Sharmah. Names and marks belong to their owners; no affiliation with, or endorsement by, the brand is implied.
Added October 2026