My second Viennese dimension is its fabulous art collections. If you are a fan of old master paintings, the Kunsthistorisches Museum (khm.at), which houses the old Hapsburg collections, is one of the greatest in Europe, easily rivalling the Prado, the National Gallery, the Hermitage and the Louvre. Among the many highlights are some of the most important works by Titian, Vermeer, Velázquez and Rubens. And it also has the world’s most extensive collection of Bruegels, including The Hunters in the Snow, which is the highlight of a whole room full of his paintings. You can also enjoy these masterpieces in peace and quiet – the Kunsthistorisches Museum gets barely a tenth as many visitors as the Louvre.

Meanwhile, if you prefer more modern art, then Vienna also has world-beating collections of works by the painters who defined the great Jugendstil and early modern movements in the late 19th and early 20th century. Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl (belvedere.at) and Egon Schiele (leopoldmuseum.org), were part of a remarkable intellectual and cultural flourishing in the city when Sigmund Freud was developing his theories of the subconscious mind, Ludwig Wittgenstein was redefining Western philosophy, and the composer Gustav Mahler was handing the musical batten to Schoenberg, Berg and Richard Strauss.

That astonishing musical heritage is my third Viennese dimension. As well as those early modern composers, this is the city of Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert and the tradition of performance is as strong as ever. Two of the world’s great orchestras still flourish here – the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (wienerphilharmoniker.at) and the city’s symphony orchestra (wienersymphoniker.at), among several others. 

The opera and ballet (wiener-staatsoper.at) are also among Europe’s best, and then there’s the chamber music. Barely an evening goes by without a concert in one of the city churches, palaces or the auditoriums of the Konzerthaus (konzerthaus.at) or Musikverein (musikverein.at).

Let’s not forget the dancing, either. Those energetic waltzes by Strauss, which powered the fabulous Viennese parties of the late 19th century, are still played with gusto during a ball season that still flourishes (wien.info).