The Vienna locations of Before Sunrise

Richard Linklater shot the whole of one night in Vienna in 1994, mostly on public ground: a footbridge, a tram ride, a lane between two houses, a burial plot on the edge of the city. Most of it is still there and free to walk into, though the wooden planking on the Zollamtssteg is now asphalt, the poet's steps have gained a railing, and the palace garden where the wine is drunk was never public in the first place. This list follows the film's order and says, for each stop, what was built when and what a visitor can and cannot get into today.

Places in this collection

  • Donaukanal — The arm of the Danube that cuts through the centre and rejoins the river near the Cemetery of the Nameless. The poet-for-hire scene is film…
  • Prater — The Wurstelprater funfair, at the western end of the old imperial hunting ground, is where the two of them go straight after the cemetery,…
  • Votivkirche — The twin-spired neogothic church on the Ringstrasse is not entered in the film but appears through the tram window seconds after the couple…
  • Schottentor — The tram stop at Universitätsring 1A sits above the split-level Schottentor interchange, and is the likeliest boarding point for the long R…
  • Westbahnhof — The station bookends the film: the pair get off the Budapest train on platform 7, and return the next morning to make the promise to meet a…
  • Franziskanerplatz — A small paved square laid out in 1624 in the shadow of the Franciscan church, which explains the monks crossing the frame. Céline has her p…
  • Zollamtssteg — A steel footbridge of 1900 by Friedrich Ohmann and Josef Hackhofer, crossing the Wien river just above its junction with the Donaukanal and…
  • Roxy — The club opened in 1991 and was still a late-night fixture on Operngasse when the film used it for the scene in which Jesse talks a bartend…
  • Gutenberggasse — The pause on a pile of pallets beside a large wooden cable spindle happens in the small alley linking Gutenberggasse 13 with Kirchberggasse…
  • Maria Theresien Platz — The square between the Kunsthistorisches and the Naturhistorisches Museum, two near-identical buildings facing each other across the 1888 m…
  • Maria am Gestade — A 15th-century Gothic church on a terrace above the old Danube arm, used in the film for the exterior of the church visit; the interior in…
  • Café Sperl — The staged telephone calls to friends in Paris and Texas are played out at one of the café's red banquettes, and the room is still laid out…
  • Albertina — The collection began as a Habsburg holding of prints and drawings in 1776 and the palace still carries its old name, Palais Erzherzog Albre…
  • Palais Schwarzenberg — Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt's baroque palace was completed in 1728 and remains in Schwarzenberg family hands, which is why the park where…
  • Spittelberg — The grid of low Biedermeier houses behind the Volkstheater supplies two consecutive scenes: the street performer whose routine Céline ident…
  • Mölker Steig — A narrow sett-paved passage that zigzags down from the Mölker Bastei, the last surviving stretch of the Renaissance city wall, toward Schre…
  • Arena Wien — The pinball and beer scene was shot in the bar of this graffiti-covered venue on Baumgasse, with Richard Linklater himself appearing in the…
  • Schützenhaus — Otto Wagner built this studded-wall pavilion on the Donaukanal as part of the Kaiserbad sluice works, a water regulation facility that neve…
  • Riesenrad — Erected in 1897 to designs by Walter Bassett Basset with Harry Hitchins and Hubert Cecil Booth, the wheel stands 64.8 metres high and carri…
  • Friedhof der Namenlosen — A burial ground opened in 1840 at Albern for bodies the Danube washed ashore, most of them never identified; the last nameless burial recor…

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