A Bank, a Rooftop and a Bed for the Dog: Rosewood Vienna

The words Erste Österreichische Spar-Casse still run across the front of Petersplatz 7. For generations this was the head office of Austria's first savings bank, founded in 1819, and the name stayed on the facade when the building became Rosewood Vienna. Walk in today with a dog on the lead and nobody looks twice. The dog can ride up to the rooftop restaurant with you, sit beside you at the bar, sleep on its own bed in the room and stay there, settled, while you spend the evening at the opera. In a city that takes its manners seriously, this is one of the most generous welcomes a dog can find.

The Setting

Petersplatz is a small square off the Graben in Vienna's first district, the Innere Stadt, and the hotel shares it with the baroque Peterskirche. The rooftop restaurant, in the hotel's own words, looks out over the old town and the copper dome of St. Peter's Church, and the Hofburg, the imperial palace of the Habsburgs, is close enough that one suite is named for its view of it. Everything a first visit to Vienna asks for, the cathedral, the palace, the coffee houses and the shopping streets, is a stroll away on foot, which is exactly how a dog likes to see a city.

The Hotel Itself

The house has more history than most. Rosewood's own account says the building was once the home of Mozart and later a prominent bank, and that the hotel brings together four restored 19th century buildings, the former headquarters of Erste Group Bank AG. The rooftop bar is called THE1835 to mark the year the house was built. Rosewood opened it in 2022, its first hotel in Austria, with 103 rooms and suites whose interiors set the old grandeur against the work of local artists.

The rooms run from a 32 square metre Deluxe Room up to the suites named for what they look at. The Hofburg Suite has its own outlook onto the palace, the St. Peter's Suite is a bright, loft-like room with what the hotel calls an intimate perspective of Vienna's baroque splendour, and the St. Peter's Wellness Suite has its own sauna and steam bath. The St. Stephen's Suite is a corner room with views across the city, and the Executive Junior Suite looks down the length of the Graben. Above them sit the Signature Houses, the Treichl, Hoffmann and Graben Houses, which the hotel describes as private residences.

Wellness happens at the Asaya Spa, with two treatment rooms, a sauna, a steam bath and an experience shower, Susanne Kaufmann facials and a Technogym studio behind floor-to-ceiling windows. The concierge can open doors most visitors never see: the hotel's own experiences include a private tour of the Vienna Secession and its golden dome, the glass workshop of J. & L. Lobmeyr, six generations old and once a supplier to the imperial court, and a visit to Pöhl am Naschmarkt, the market stall that supplies the hotel's kitchen.

The Welcome

Rosewood Vienna says it on its own policy page: pets are welcome in all its food and beverage outlets. Few city hotels at this level go that far. In practice it means the dog comes with you to Neue Hoheit, to the bar and onto the terrace, and into the lounge.

The room is ready before you arrive. A dog bed, food and water bowls and free treats are laid on, and the hotel sells dog food if the bag in the car runs out. Ask at the desk and the team will give you routes for a walk, arrange a dog walker for the morning you would rather sleep in, find a dog sitter for a long dinner and book a groomer before you head home. A settled dog can stay in the room while you go out. There is no weight limit, so a Labrador is as welcome as a dachshund, no limit on how many dogs share your room, and no damage deposit. Cats are welcome too.

Dinner on the Roof

Neue Hoheit is the rooftop restaurant, with a wine gallery and a planted garden terrace, and it cooks Austrian food with a fresh eye from breakfast at seven until half past ten at night. The menu keeps the classics close. There is a beef consommé with sliced pancakes and root vegetables, with a semolina or liver dumpling added if you want one. There are Schupfnudeln, Austrian potato noodles, with chanterelles, green beans, egg yolk and Comté. Austrian beef filet comes with celery cream, or Rossini style with foie gras and truffle. The Kaiserschmarrn arrives with rum raisins, vanilla sauce and plum compote, at 18 euros, and the menu warns you of "25 Minutes of Happy Anticipation" while it is made. On Wednesdays the kitchen serves Beef Wellington.

Before or after, the Neue Hoheit Bar on the sixth floor pours Champagne and cocktails with oysters from midday, and from five in the evening THE1835 serves its signature cocktails with the skyline beyond the glass. In-room dining runs around the clock, for the night the dog has walked further than it meant to.

A Day Here With Your Dog

Begin with breakfast at SiL on Babenbergerstraße, a few streets away in the Innere Stadt. It serves breakfast and brunch every day from nine, keeps a menu for its dog guests, and asks you to mention the dog when you reserve so it can give you a suitable table.

Then cross the Danube Canal into Leopoldstadt for the Augarten, the oldest surviving baroque garden in Vienna, laid out in the 17th and 18th centuries and home to the Augarten porcelain manufactory and the Vienna Boys' Choir. Dogs walk its long avenues and run free in two fenced dog zones, Augarten Ost and Augarten West, both with water, which the City of Vienna lists on its own dog zone page.

For a longer outing, go on to the Prater, the great park Joseph II opened to every Viennese in 1766, with the tree lined Hauptallee running through it. The same city list gives the Prater two vast off-lead meadows, Pelzmais at about 120,000 square metres and Rustenschacher at about 187,000, with a drinking point for dogs at Rustenschacher. Come back to Petersplatz in time for a glass at the Neue Hoheit Bar, then leave the dog asleep on its bed while you go out to hear Mozart in the city where he lived.

Why It Matters

Vienna is a city of rules, and a dog owner arriving for the first time can wonder where the dog is allowed to be. Rosewood Vienna answers the question at the door. The dog comes to dinner on the roof, to the bar and onto the terrace, it has a bed and bowls waiting upstairs, and there is someone to walk it, sit with it or groom it when you need them. All of that sits inside a bank that became a palace of a hotel, with the Hofburg out of one window and Peterskirche out of another. It is the rare grand city hotel where the dog shares the best of it, not the back stairs. Book it, and pack the lead.

Good to Know

Most rooms take dogs, so name the dog when you book. The fee is 50 euros per dog per night. Dogs stay on the lead in the hotel, the spa and fitness rooms are kept for people, and the hotel asks that dogs are kept from barking indoors. The City of Vienna requires a muzzle for some breeds, and the same rule applies inside the hotel.

Rosewood Vienna scored a Roch Rank of A+. Read the official Roch Dog review or visit the hotel's website.