Where to stay in Vienna: the best neighbourhoods and hotels

The 1st district is Vienna in concentrate. St Stephen's Cathedral rises over a maze of lanes and squares, the elegant shopping streets of the Graben and Kohlmarkt lead to the vast Hofburg palace, and you can watch the Lipizzaner horses of the Spanish Riding School or simply settle into a coffee house with a slice of cake.

Hotels range widely in style. There's a refined five-star in an Art Nouveau building on a quiet street within the Ring, a grand hotel a few minutes from the Graben and Kohlmarkt, a classic on the pedestrianised Kärntner Strasse, and a hotel in the house where Mozart lived in 1773, near the cathedral.

The Ringstrasse was built in the 19th century where the city walls once stood, and it is lined with one showpiece after another: the State Opera, the Parliament, the City Hall, the great art and natural history museums and the Stadtpark, with its gilded statue of Johann Strauss.

Its hotels are some of the most famous in Europe. One faces the Opera and gave the world its most famous chocolate cake; another, a luxury boutique, sits between the Opera and the Musikverein concert hall. There's a modern classic with a rooftop pool and a hotel in a pair of 1871 palaces overlooking the Stadtpark. Book a room on the boulevard and the trams glide past like toy trains.

Just outside the Ring in the 7th district, Spittelberg is a pocket of cobbled lanes and pastel Biedermeier houses, once full of artisan workshops and now full of wine bars, restaurants and little shops. Next door, the MuseumsQuartier has the Leopold Museum's great Schiele collection, with the Kunsthistorisches Museum just across the road.

It is the most characterful base in Vienna, a short walk from the centre. Hotels are small and stylish: a boutique hotel crammed with contemporary art in a 19th-century townhouse, a new hotel on a quiet street moments from the museums, a calm retreat in the heart of the district, and a smart four-star on Mariahilfer Strasse, the city's biggest shopping street.

The Naschmarkt is Vienna's most famous market, a long strip of stalls selling spices, olives, cheese and street food, with cafés that fill up on Saturday mornings. Around it, the Mariahilf district has Jugendstil apartment blocks, the golden-domed Secession building and the shops of Mariahilfer Strasse.

Hotels here are comfortable, modern and well priced: one a few minutes' walk from the market, another right by it, and a four-star on Mariahilfer Strasse with the metro at the door and the museums less than a kilometre away.

Josefstadt, the 8th district, is small, genteel and very Viennese: quiet streets of handsome apartment houses, neighbourhood cafés, antique shops and one of the city's oldest theatres. The neo-Gothic City Hall, whose square hosts a Christmas market and summer film festival, is on its doorstep, and the Ring is a few minutes' walk away.

Hotels here suit travellers who want calm without being far from anything: a four-star with imperial flair on a quiet side street, a modern hotel a few steps from the City Hall and the museums, and a family-run hotel by the university, in its fourth generation.

South of the centre, the Belvedere is a pair of Baroque palaces set in formal gardens, home to Klimt's The Kiss. Below them, the area around the Hauptbahnhof, Vienna's modern main station, has been rebuilt with offices, parks and new hotels, and trams run to the Ring in minutes.

This is a smart choice if you're arriving by train or watching the budget. Hotels include a stylish lifestyle hotel with a rooftop bar in the new Quartier Belvedere, a classic four-star five minutes' walk from the palace and good-value modern hotels right by the station, one just three metro stops from St Stephen's.

The Habsburgs' summer residence is one of the great sights of Europe: a vast yellow palace with endless formal gardens, a hilltop Gloriette and, in the grounds, the zoo, the oldest in the world. Staying nearby means having the gardens to yourself in the early morning, a gift for families with young children.

Hotels here are peaceful and roomy, from a grand old hotel close to the palace park to a modern hotel in its own grounds beside the Technical Museum and another right next to the palace. The centre is about ten minutes away on the U-Bahn.

Across the Danube Canal, the Prater is Vienna's playground: a huge park of meadows and chestnut avenues with a funfair at one end, crowned by the giant Ferris wheel that has turned since 1897. Further east, the Danube itself has Danube Island, a long, car-free strip of beaches, cycle paths and swimming spots that comes alive in summer.

Hotels out here are modern and good value. Pick from a hotel in a historic building right on the Danube, a stylish budget-friendly hotel by the Prater and the exhibition centre, or big, modern hotels near the UN complex in Donaustadt, a few stops from the centre on the U-Bahn.