Wien.

Settling into Prückel just after it opens. The Ring's old Kaffeehaus has the same banquettes since 1955, the same Melange in the same Prückel cup. Eierspeise mit Schinken — eggs scrambled with Austrian ham, chives sprinkled on top — and watching the Number 2 tram glide past every few minutes. There's a particular morning hush in Vienna where the trams move but nobody's rushing yet.

Walking through the Stadtpark to find the Strauss monument. Gilded bronze of Johann Strauss II, violin under the chin, framed by a white marble arch of Art Nouveau figures dancing around him. Vienna's most photographed statue — and you understand why the second you turn the corner. Dark tulip beds at the base, April sky, exactly the right light.

Wandering off the Ring into the back streets and finding Franziskanerkirche. The façade is the wrong colour for Vienna — a soft slate grey — with pointed Gothic windows below a curling Renaissance gable. Three styles, one wall.

The Franciscans have been on this corner since 1224, 802 years before this morning. The current building is from 1603; inside, Andrea Pozzo’s high altar of 1707 pulls its own trick — real columns dissolving into painted perspective partway up.

A few lanes north, the Jesuitenkirche — a sober front on a quiet university square hiding the most theatrical interior in the district. Pozzo again: between 1703 and 1705 he rebuilt the inside as pure illusion. The dome above the nave isn’t real — it’s painted flat onto the ceiling. The perspective only resolves correctly from one spot on the floor. Stand on the mark, the dome rises above you. Step left, and it collapses back into paint.

Two hundred metres further on, walking into Dominikanerkirche — the Dominicans on their site since 1226, almost the same as the Franciscans. The interior here is the textbook of Vienna baroque: white stucco that looks whipped onto the walls, brown marble columns, a single enormous altar painting of the Virgin and saints. A walnut confessional like a piece of cabinet-making sits in the side aisle, a small gold cross on its dome.

Then through the lanes to Stephansdom. You don't expect it until it's on top of you — the cathedral has been growing on this spot since 1147, and the south spire (the Steffl) rises 137 metres in carved limestone. The roof is tiled in 230,000 glazed chevrons that form the Habsburg double eagle when seen from above.

Walking the perimeter takes twenty minutes. On the south wall behind glass: a Passion fresco cycle from the 1400s, still in colour. Tucked under a buttress: the Zahnwehherrgott, the Toothache God — a stone Christ figure whose anguished face used to draw pilgrims praying for relief from dental pain.

Then to Loos. Easy to miss — the entrance is a thin slot off a side alley off Kärntner Straße. Inside: 27 square metres, mahogany and brass and onyx-glass, designed by Adolf Loos in 1908 as a protest against ornament. Mirrors set into the upper walls expand the room to infinity — the eye reads it as a much bigger bar than it actually is.

An Old Fashioned on the table. Ice cube the size of a Rubik's cube, orange peel and cherry. A monograph on Loos open in front of me — they leave them on the tables, so you sit in the room while reading about it.

The S7 from the airport hits Wien Hauptbahnhof in 25 minutes for less than a fiver. The Premier Inn is two minutes' walk from the concourse — same chain as London, same purple sign, but in Vienna. Bed by midnight. Quiet room. Station coffee at first light.

Walking up to Belvedere just after eight. The south gate first — wrought iron, crowned lions, gilded shields, very Habsburg — and then through into the gardens.

The trick with Belvedere is to walk all the way down the parterre first, then turn around. Hildebrandt designed the cascade and terraces in 1725 as one optical instrument; every gradient calibrated so the palace appears to float above its hill when viewed from below. Twenty metres of designed rise, every step tuned. The gardens to myself for half an hour before the first tour bus.

Back to the hotel by 11. Bag left at reception with a small lavender ticket — Gepäckschein [redacted]. The bag stays put until the train. The rest of the day is light.

Unlocking a Lime scooter outside Hauptbahnhof and pointing it north. Vienna is one of the great cycling cities — wide protected lanes lining every Ringstrasse boulevard, smooth granite setts that the wheels barely feel. The whole inner city was rebuilt in the 1860s with Franz Joseph's vision of public space at its centre, and you feel that now, scooting past Belvedere's perimeter wall, through Schwarzenbergplatz, along the Ring with Parliament's white columns sliding past on the left.

Fifteen minutes door-to-door, wind in the face, the whole imperial quarter as your front yard.

Through security at the Palace of Justice and into the Aula. Glass-and-iron barrel vault on stone arcades, marble staircase climbing to a statue of Justitia at the top. 1881 imperial engineering at imperial scale — the kind of room designed to make you straighten your back walking through it.

Then up to the fifth floor.

The fifth-floor terrace looks out over the Ring. Parliament directly opposite, the Rathaus's neo-Gothic spire to the left, the Hofburg complex spreading east toward Stephansdom, the Naturhistorisches and Kunsthistorisches museums framing the view to the right. No tourists know about this — it's a working canteen for the courts.

Standing at the railing and the whole 19th-century planning project of Vienna is laid out in front of you. The Ring was Franz Joseph's idea: tear down the medieval city walls, build a boulevard ring of public buildings around the old centre. From up here you can see the whole thing as one composition.

Down through the Volksgarten — full rose bloom in May — and into Burggarten, the old imperial private garden. The Palmenhaus is 128 metres of wrought iron and glass, opened 1901, one of the largest of its kind in Europe.

Tucked into one wing: the Schmetterlinghaus, the butterfly house. Inside it's tropical — humid air, 400 species, all free-flying. Owl butterflies hanging upside-down on bromeliads with their fake-eye markings; a scarlet peacock landing on a leaf two feet from my face. Stayed an hour without meaning to.

Walking through Hofburg into Albertinaplatz — and there it is, Hans Hollein's titanium Soravia Wing hovering above the baroque Albertina palace. 64 metres of cantilever, no visible support, finished 2003. Pure tension structure suspending itself against everything underneath it.

The equestrian Archduke Albert is in front, the white spire of Augustinerkirche behind, the State Opera through the next arch. The whole stage set of Vienna in one corner.

Pre-flight fuel at Bitzinger — a green-and-cream sausage cart tucked into the corner of Albertinaplatz, square in the shadow of the State Opera. Here since the 1940s, no architect's name attached, just a kiosk that's outlasted whole governments. Look closely at the previous photo — you can see it on the left, the little stall the size of a small car, holding its own against Hollein's titanium cantilever and the Opera's neo-Renaissance arcade.

Käsekrainer — cheese-stuffed bratwurst, the cheese melted through the pork so each bite has a hot pocket of it — with süßer Senf and a bottle of Ottakringer. Eaten standing at the chest-high counter. The crowd is everything: theatre performers in dark coats heading to evening rehearsals at the Staatsoper, lawyers off duty, taxi drivers, tourists who lucked into it. All scoffing down a Wurst and a beer in the same three-minute ritual. The best closing meal in the city — and the most democratic.

Lime scooter back to Premier Inn the same way I came — south down the Ring, past the front of Belvedere again, the golden hour catching the upper façade. Bag collected (claim number redacted). Platform 3. ÖBB Railjet to Flughafen Wien at 18:40. Then boarding pass for OS 7151 / ET 0725, with personal boarding details redacted.

22:05 wheels up. Vienna behind, Addis ahead. Somewhere over the Balkans this memoir gets written.