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The opening of an ambitious complex of museums, restaurants and cafés highlights the first year of the new millennium in Vienna, a city already rich in culture.
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| Vienna's Schloss Schönbrunn |
Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, features two prominent musical selections, Richard Strauss's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the famed Blue Danube by Johann Strauss (no relation). It is with this tenuous, yet chronologically relevant connection that we begin our Vienna report, a summation of what the city has to offer this year, plus hotel and restaurant reviews, including updates of some old favorites. So, as we proceed, imagine Zarathustras trumpet fanfare and swirling violins rising up to introduce one of the most exciting cultural events to take place in Vienna in the last decade: the opening of the Museumsquartier.
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The MQ, as it is being called, is an enormous cultural complex located in the former Imperial Stables just behind Vienna's Fine Arts and Natural History museums. The city is spending about $130 million to convert these noble equestrian buildings designed by the imperial architect Fischer von Erlach into a living and breathing modern art district, open round-the-clock (with just a short break when the coffeehouse/dance club closes at 4am and the Children's Museum opens again at 8:30am).
On an ordinary day, the MQ will offer a flock of exhibits, as well as dance, music and art performances. There will also be a host of cafés, bars, and garden restaurants the best of which should be the beloved Gleisebeisl, which for years has occupied a part of the former city wall at the back of the complex. The project's architects have planned multiple entranceways to the quarter to encourage people to wander through in hopes of turning it into a popular pedestrian walkway.
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