The house
Rotenturmstraße 12: The Story of the House Behind the Lindenkeller
29 September 2026 · 3 min read
From a first recorded owner in 1367 to a new building by Fellner & Helmer in 1877: the documented history of the house at number 12, and the tradition behind the date 1435.
Anyone searching for the oldest restaurant in Vienna soon runs into old dates and older stories. At the Lindenkeller, house tradition gives 1435, the year etched into the windows facing the street. That tradition, handed down with the name, holds that an inn stood here as early as 1435, and that ‘the Linde’ counts among the oldest in the city.
Alongside that tradition, the house at Rotenturmstraße 12 has a written history of its own. What follows comes from the city’s history wiki, the Wien Geschichte Wiki, whose entry draws on Paul Harrer’s Wien, seine Häuser. You can read it for yourself.
1367: the first known owner
The oldest known owner of the house is recorded in 1367. Over the centuries that followed, it changed hands many times. In 1646, one of its owners was Johannes Matthias Testarello della Massa.
Before Vienna numbered its buildings street by street, each house in the old town carried a Konskriptionsnummer (an old house number, nothing to do with military service). This one was number 755 from 1770 to 1795, number 779 from 1795 to 1821, and number 733 from 1821 to 1862.
A relief from the old house
The records mention a curious detail. In the courtyard of the old house, the one later pulled down, there was a relief showing the risen Christ surrounded by sleeping guards.
It possibly dated from the 15th century and had probably been mounted on an even earlier building before being moved to the house that followed it.
1876/77: a new building by Fellner & Helmer
In 1876/77 the old house was replaced by a new building. It was designed by Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer, the Vienna-based partnership best known for the many theatres it built across Central Europe.
‘Zur Linde’: where the name comes from
The house has another name, too: Zur Linde, ‘At the Linden Tree’ (or the lime tree, as it’s usually called in Britain). The inn in the house carried that name; today the house is home to the Lindenkeller restaurant.
According to the wiki, the name recalls a linden tree of legend that once stood in front of the first parsonage of St Stephen’s. The cathedral is only a few minutes’ walk away, and our walk from St Stephen’s to Schwedenplatz starts right there.
A menu from 1904, a photograph from around 1910
Two documents give a glimpse of the restaurant in earlier days. The Wien Museum’s online collection holds a menu card from 1904 and a photograph of the restaurant’s interior from around 1910; both appear in the gallery of the wiki entry. A later photograph of Rotenturmstraße 12–14, taken in 1941, is held by the Vienna City and State Archives.
The dishes have changed since 1904. Today’s Viennese classics are on our menu.