Hotel Imperial

The Hotel Imperial on the Ring, built as a prince’s palace, serves the Imperial Torte, its own almond and chocolate answer to the Sacher, in the Café Imperial where Vienna has taken cake since 1873.

The palace of the Duke of Württemberg on the Ringstrasse became a hotel for the 1873 World Exhibition and remained the address of state guests: Wagner, Elizabeth II, most of the twentieth century’s heads of state. Its torte, the Imperial, layers of almond and chocolate cream under marzipan and chocolate, is made in the hotel’s pastry kitchen to a recipe from the founding years and sold in a wooden box like its rival across the Opera. The Café Imperial serves it with coffee under stucco and chandeliers, and the hotel runs an afternoon tea in the same room.

The Imperial is the connoisseur’s torte: less famous, finer in texture, and served in a café that the tour buses have not found.