Grand Ferdinand Hotel

Grand Ferdinand Hotel

The Grand Ferdinand sits directly on Vienna's Ringstrasse, in the 1st district, ten minutes on foot from the State Opera and the Musikverein and just over half a mile from the Albertina. The building itself was raised in 1950 and reopened as a hotel in 2015, after Florian Weitzer converted the listed structure into 188 rooms across seven floors. It is the only owner-run Austrian hotel on the whole Ringstrasse, and that shows in details a chain would standardize away: a freestanding bathtub in the Ferdinand Suite, wooden floors in the modern rooms, and three restaurants run as separate kitchens rather than one buffet hall, from Meissl & Schadn's schnitzel to Limón's southern cooking eight floors up. That same eighth floor holds the rooftop pool, a compact 6.5 by 2.5 metre basin held at a steady 23 degrees year round and framed by the historic rooflines of the city. Breakfast runs from 7am to 11am in the Grande Étage, or until noon at Gulasch & Söhne, though it costs extra, as does parking at 40 euros a day and the pet fee. A Technogym gym on the first floor overlooks a green courtyard, and allergy-free rooms, family rooms, and a conference hall round out a property built for people who want the opera district covered on foot and a proper dinner after, not a quiet escape from the city. It fronts the boulevard itself, so anyone wanting distance from the city center should look elsewhere. For a traveler who wants culture by day and a rooftop swim with a view of Vienna's rooftops by evening, few addresses on this stretch of the Ring offer both. A 1950s building on the Ringstrasse, reopened in 2015 as Vienna's only owner-run hotel on the boulevard, keeps a rooftop pool at 23 degrees above the old rooflines and three separate kitchens instead of one buffet room. Not a hotel for anyone seeking quiet elsewhere in the city center.