Fiakerzentrale Wien - Etrichstraße 40/1/8

great service, nice and multilingual coachmen who love their horses :))

Reservation worked very well. The carriage and the horses were well maintained. The coachman was sympathetic.

It was a wonderful carriage ride with imperial weather through the Schönbrunn palace gardens and the coachman was funny, informative and very, very friendly The next trip will be booked again soon thanks

On the streets of Vienna, we VERY often saw fiakras near cars. Carriages drawn by a pair of horses are a typical sign of the Austrian capital, nostalgia for a bygone era. Many people compare Vienna Fiakra (Fiaker in Wien) with Venetian gondolas - this is not transport, it is a symbol of the city. It is said that in the past, cab drivers, like Venetian gondoliers, entertained passengers with singing. Horse-drawn carriages traveled along Vienna streets from the 17th century - they became the first urban public transport. True, the name "fiacre" came to Austria later, from France. Saint Fiacre Street in Paris was the first public parking lot for crews. Saint Fiacre is considered the patron saint of cabmen. In the 19th century, a thousand fiakres rode the streets of Vienna. The horses were decorated with elegant harnesses, chauffeurs wore dandy pots. Today, tourists and newlyweds use the services of hired crews. Horses, so as not to be afraid of street transport, put on blinders. In recent years, fiakra owners have been obligated to attach diapers to animals. Special cleaners left the streets of Vienna, who earned by selling manure to farmers for fertilizers. Without them, cleaning horses became a problem. Little by little the fiakra is also being squeezed out of old Vienna. New Pooh-Bags devices for horses prevent animals from moving. Cab drivers also have difficulties - they have to go through the procedure for obtaining licenses, pass exams, confirm the compliance of work and keeping animals with the approved standards. Licensed fiacras receive special cards - red and green, indicating the right to work on even or odd days. You can’t ride every day - there are not enough parking places. Do not leave fiacra in bad weather. However, to date, 150 fiacres still operate in Vienna. Among the coachmen there are ladies. For the first time, the daughter of one of the owners of fiakra became a cab in 1996, despite the protests of male colleagues. Today almost a third of Viennese cabmen are women In Vienna there is the Fiakerplatz square, there is also a monument to the cabman. The largest fiacra parking lot is located near Stephansplatz. There are also parking lots at Michaelerplatz, at Heldenplatz in Hofburg, next to the Albertina and Burgtheater, near the church of St. Peter and Schönnbrunn A twenty-minute small ring tour of the old city costs 55 euros, a forty-minute large ring tour of the Ringstrasse through the old city - 80 euros. But this luxury was not included in our plans. We once drove in 2008 for fun or fun down the Neuschwanstein Castle. And there’s no special interest in riding now. But looking at the handsome cabmen and the horses themselves is interesting.