Neubau is the seventh district, and the one Vienna's designers, record-sellers and second-hand dealers quietly colonised. This is the walk for the side of the city that isn't gilt and waltz — three kilometres of Gassen (streets) where the shopfront matters more than the palace.
Start at Neubaugasse and walk down. The design shops and small Beisls (a Viennese pub-eatery) set the tone; on the first Saturday of the month the whole street closes for a fair. Turn up Kirchengasse into the vintage-and-brunch Grätzl (a small neighbourhood), then west to Ulrichsplatz — a cobbled square with a baroque church on it that you can have entirely to yourself on a weekday afternoon. It is the small wonder of this walk, and nobody tells you it's there.
From there into Spittelberg, the grid of low Biedermeier houses that survived the wrecking ball: galleries, courtyards, a streetscape frozen around 1880. Finish along Burggasse, past the antique dealers, to Burggasse-Stadthalle and the U6. Or turn back to Spittelberg for a drink. The district won't mind.
