Vienna's Hip Neighborhood

Paris has the Latin Quarter, London has Notting Hill, and the bohemian district in Vienna is the Freihaus sector in the 4th District (Wieden), one of Vienna's trendiest neighborhoods.

In the 17th century, Freihaus provided free housing to the city's poor, hence the name "Freihaus," which means Free House. The complex was destroyed in the Turkish siege of 1683, then rebuilt on a much larger scale, becoming arguably the largest housing project in Europe at the time. It was a city within a city, including shops and the old Theater auf der Wieden, in which Mozart's The Magic Flute premiered. A slow decline followed, spanning Franz Josef's reign from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, with some of the area razed before World War I and finished off during World War II.

But in the late 1990s a group of savvy local merchants revitalized the area, opening funky art galleries, antiques shops, espresso bars, trendy restaurants, and boutiques. Freihaus is small, stretching from Karlsplatz to Kettenbrückengasse, which encompasses part of the Naschmarkt, the city's largest open-air market. Two of the best streets are Operngasse and Schleifmühlgasse.