Hotel Sacher

Hotel Sacher is a five-star luxury hotel in Vienna, Austria, facing the Vienna State Opera in the city's central Innere Stadt district. It is famous for the specialty of the house, the Sachertorte, a chocolate cake with apricot filling. There is also an art gallery in the hotel, with works from the 19th century. The hotel is located near the former residence of Antonio Vivaldi. Hotel Sacher is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World, a marketing network.

History

The hotel was founded in 1876 as a maison meublée at the site of the demolished Theater am Kärntnertor by the restaurateur and k.u.k. purveyor to the court Eduard Sacher (1843–1892). His father, the confectioner Franz Sacher (1816–1907), had become famous for his Sachertorte, which he allegedly created for a reception given by Austrian State Chancellor Klemens von Metternich in 1832. Eduard Sacher did an apprenticeship at the patisserie Demel and in 1873 opened his first restaurant on Kärntner Straße.

In 1880, he married Anna Sacher née Fuchs (1859–1930), who became managing director after his death. She quickly earned a reputation for both her commercial skills and her eccentricity, never being seen without her French Bulldogs and a cigar. Under her management, Hotel Sacher became one of the finest hotels in the world, where the aristocracy and diplomats would meet. However, after World War I, Anna Sacher upheld the upper-class reputation of the hotel and denied service to guests of non-aristocratic descent while granting generous credit to impoverished aristocrats. Her management ran the business into financial problems, and eventually to bankruptcy and a change of ownership in the 1930s.