Things to Do in Neubau

Neubau smells like fresh coffee and linseed oil. Walk west from the MuseumsQuartier and the marble suddenly gives way to graffitied facades, indie boutiques, and the low rumble of trams on Mariahilfer Straße. Here, nineteenth-century apartment blocks lean over courtyards where students smoke roll-ups beside ceramic ashtrays the size of dinner plates. Afternoons bring the metallic clink of espresso cups on Neubaugasse and the faint sweet trace of marzipan drifting out of Manner's factory on the corner. Neubau tends to draw the people who think Vienna ends at the Ringstrasse. They come for vinyl crates, Japanese denim, and third-wave coffee roasted in old air-raid shelters. You'll see silver-haired professors haggling over flea-market cameras while teenagers queue for Korean hot dogs wrapped in panko. At dusk the neon of independent cinemas flickers across wet cobblestones. By midnight the side streets echo with the thud of bass from basement clubs that never bothered with signs.

U3 (orange line) runs straight through Neubau - alight at Neubaugasse for vintage shops or Volkstheater for the MQ. Tram 49 clatters along Mariahilfer Straße from Westbahnhof to the Ring; a single ticket bought onboard is €2.40. Night bus N49 takes over after 00:30. Most streets are flat, so renting a bright-red Citybike from the station at MuseumsQuartier costs €1 for the unlock, first hour free.