Anantara Palais Hansen Vienna Hotel

The Hotel

Palais Hansen was completed in 1873 by Baron Theophil Edvard von Hansen — the Danish-born Vienna architect responsible for the Austrian Parliament, the Musikverein and the Vienna Stock Exchange — as a hotel and residential palace for the Vienna World Exhibition. The building never operated as a hotel in the 1873 cycle (the Exhibition itself was a financial disaster), and for the next 130 years the palace served as offices and residential apartments. The conversion to a luxury hotel was finally completed in 2013, when Kempinski took the operating licence and opened Palais Hansen Kempinski Vienna. In March 2024 the property was rebranded as Anantara Palais Hansen Vienna under Minor Hotels, the Bangkok-based luxury group that owns the Anantara brand. A staged renovation through 2024 and 2025 reworked the rooms, the public spaces and the dining infrastructure under Anantara's contemplative-luxury house style.

There are 152 rooms and suites — by category, the most generously sized inventory in central Vienna for the price tier. The classic categories average 39 square metres; the Junior Suites run to 60 and the One-Bedroom Suites to 75. The Royal Suite, on the corner of the building overlooking Schottenring, is one of the largest hotel suites in central Vienna at 200 square metres. Rooms either face the Ringstrasse — with views down the boulevard and across to Votivkirche — or the building's three internal courtyards, which are the quieter and more sheltered choice. The interior style is restrained: oak floors, pale walls, low-key contemporary furniture, with the original 19th-century stuccowork and the protected listed-building features carefully preserved. Anantara's 2024–2025 refresh kept the existing finishes substantially intact and re-worked the soft furnishings and lighting.

EDVARD — named for Baron von Hansen himself — is the Michelin-starred restaurant on the lobby level and one of central Vienna's serious tasting-menu addresses. The kitchen runs a French-Austrian programme with an extensive wine cellar, in a low-lit room with the original parquet and one of the building's most ornate stuccowork ceilings. Brasserie Sophie, named for Hansen's wife and re-launched under Anantara, is the all-day room for breakfast, lunch and weekend brunch — a daylit space at the front of the building with a fully open kitchen. Theo's Lounge & Bar, in the old library, runs afternoon tea, an extended cocktail programme and the building's most popular working-table venue. The spa, on the lower floor, includes a 17-metre indoor pool — central Vienna's longest hotel pool — sauna, steam and a treatment menu programmed under Anantara's house wellness brand.

The Schottenring position is the address's quiet asset. Schottenring is the north-western arc of the Ringstrasse, less commercial than Kärntner Ring at the Opera end and quieter at street level — but inside the same Innere Stadt walking radius (St Stephen's is twelve minutes on foot, the Hofburg eight). The hotel sits two minutes from Schottentor U-Bahn, with direct connections across the city and to the airport. For travellers who want a Ringstrasse-front five-star without the price tier of the Imperial or the Sacher — and for whom the Anantara service style (hushed, quietly Asian-trained) is an attraction in its own right — this is the Vienna address.

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