This is two Viennas in two and a half kilometres: the big cultural courtyard and the cobbled village pressed up behind it. The trick is to treat the museums as optional and the lanes as the destination.
Start in the MuseumsQuartier, the old court stables now full of galleries and painted Enzi benches. Sit in the main yard first — half the pleasure here is doing nothing in it. Then, if you pick one museum, pick the Leopold for its Schiele; the mumok's black cube opposite is the answering note in basalt.
Slip out past the Volkstheater and the grandeur falls away. The Spittelberg is a pocket of low 18th-century houses on cobbled Gassen — galleries, Beisls, the odd craft shop — that somehow survived between the Ring and the traffic. Walk Spittelberggasse with no route in mind.
Climb out onto Burggasse and take a glass at a Schanigarten table before the U-Bahn. You'll have gone from imperial stables to village lane and back without leaving one neighbourhood.
