Vienna on New Year’s Eve offers an explosive mixture of events as the city lets its hair down for an all-night party. There are marquees and live performances, rock ’n’ roll, disco and old-fashioned waltzes. The New Year’s Trail points the way from one attraction to the next. Everything stops on the stroke of midnight as the ‘Pummerin’ bell in St. Stephen’s Cathedral booms in the New Year, before the revelers continue to party on right through the night.

As the temperature drops, the party heats up. Vienna on New Year’s Eve is a sight to behold, with thousands of people on the streets, wending their way from one open-air spectacle to the next, unless they are attending one of the concerts or galas, or enjoying a tour of the city. Firecrackers explode all night, sparkling wine and punch flows, and the mood of the crowd bubbles over with exuberance. New Year’s Eve in Vienna is a loud and merry time. This is no accident, but the enactment of an established tradition: in the fourth century Pope Silvester, after whom the night is named in Austria, tried to purge the new Christian church of heathen customs, but the old gods proved to be extremely stubborn. They kept on returning in the form of scheming devils, evil spirits or artful demons, digging their way into people’s souls until the man of God realized that one devil best drives out another and using the old believes announced that the only thing they couldn’t stand was noise. This is the reason why the New Year is heralded in with pyrotechnics, firecrackers and loud bangs to make sure that it is free of dark spirits.

New Year’s Eve open-air: the mega-party

Downtown Vienna follows Pope Silvester’s instructions with particular enthusiasm. The romantic alleys, elegant shopping streets and squares are metamorphosed into a pulsing mega-party. Thousands of people follow the New Year’s Trail, stopping off for sparkling wine, punch and snacks as they make their way from one attraction to the next, from the City Hall to Teinfaltstrasse, Freyung and Hoher Markt. There are marquees, live performances and entertainment all over the place, and the louder it gets, the more confident the people of Vienna can be that the evil spirits are being driven out. Music, of course, is a favorite way of making noise: from waltzes and dancefloor to oldies and folk music. In front of the Opera House is a bank of video screens showing popular operettas.

Those who want to take off into the New Year in style should have a ride in the old carriages on the Giant Ferris Wheel in the Prater, where from the top overlooking the illuminated panorama of Vienna, they can greet the New Year with a glass of champagne. For the energetic there’s the chance to jog into the New Year on a 5.4 km course along the Ring boulevard past the monumental architecture for which Vienna is famous.

A more romantic way of ringing in the New Year is to view the lights of the city from the Danube. DDSG Blue Danube offers boat trips on the river where passengers can celebrate in more sedate fashion away from the hurly-burly while still being close to the action—and dancing the night away if they wish to. Or one goes up by free shuttlebus to the Cobenzl, a mountain on Vienna’s fringe providing the best view of all the fireworks welcoming the New Year, where appetising little food-stalls invite for a little New Yars nibble.

But there is much more to New Year’s Eve in Vienna: cabaret and karaoke, magicians, palm-readers, fortune-tellers and the old tradition of interpreting the future by examining the forms taken on by molten lead when it is dropped into cold water.

As midnight approaches, the masses migrate towards St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Just before the old year comes to an end, the music stops and the countdown begins, culminating in the booming chimes of the ‘Pummerin’ from the cathedral bell tower, to the accompaniment of Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz as midnight passes. Then the sparkling wine corks pop and complete strangers joyfully wish each other a Happy New Year full of luck and happiness. And to get the year off to a good start, the crowds carry on partying until the early hours of the morning.

New Year’s Eve for the élite: balls, galas and concerts

The renowned Imperial Ball in the Hofburg ballroom is a time for rustling ball gowns, expensive jewelry and the imperial majesty of the Austro-Hungarian empire of yore. Just as the Habsburgs used to celebrate the New Year, a gala dinner complete with liveried lackeys marks the start of a night of waltzing, culminating at midnight in a performance by the dancers and singers of Vienna’s two opera houses.

Also the Silvestergala in the great celebration hall of the Wiener Rathaus is an elegant event. The opening of the ball with the tune of a waltz and the debutantes of the season and their escorts; a delicious international buffet and the official welcome of the new year from the state balcony prove once more Vienna as center of savoir vivre.

That Vienna remains a center of elegance and refinement is also borne out by the balls and galas held at the city’s deluxe hotels, organized with all the old-world charm of a bygone era.

Needless to say, Vienna also does full justice to its reputation as the city of music, and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day concerts make for a harmonious start to the year. The Wiener Symphoniker, Wiener Hofburgorchester and Wiener Ring-Ensemble, the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, the Strauss Festival Orchester or the Wiener Residenzorchester, just to mention a few, offer music at its finest. The most reputed event, of course, is the New Year’s Day Concert by the Wiener Philharmoniker, which is heard every year by a billion people throughout the world. It was first staged in 1941 and has been conducted since then by all the world’s most famous conductors. In recent years Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel , Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa and Nikolaus Harnoncourt have led the orchestra in the flower-adorned Golden Hall of the Musikverein in the popular program of Strauss melodies. Tickets for this world-famous event are worth their weight in gold. Apart from the fact that reservations for the next concert have to arrive in Vienna on the first working day of the new year, the tickets are allocated by lottery. All that the Philharmonic can do is to wish applicants good luck!

New Year’ Eve at home: fortune-telling and traditional fare

In spite of the many attractions that New Year’s Eve offers, many people prefer to celebrate the New Year wining, dining and dancing in a more intimate setting. At midnight, however, as soon as the chimes of the ‘Pummerin’ have sounded through the open window or from the radio, the guests drink to each other’s health, wish each other good luck and present each other with lucky trinkets in the form of pigs, clover, lucky bags or ladybugs that are mostly carried around in the purse for the rest of the year. Many people go out onto the street and set off firecrackers or rockets. And then there is the tradition of fortune-telling with lead: a small piece of lead is heated over a flame and plunged into cold water. The shapes that form as a result are then interpreted. A rounded heart, for example, is a sure sign of winning everabody’s heart in the coming year.

After midnight, many people serve up special New Year’s Eve dishes like lentil-salad and pigs head. The first should bring lots of coins, the second means a fat and therefore lucky year. Happy New Year!