Filming locations in Vienna

Visiting Vienna: a set-jetting guide. Few cities have worn the screen as elegantly as the Austrian capital, and the two films that draw pilgrims here could hardly be further apart in mood. Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) still defines the city's shadow side, while Mission: Impossible (1996) gave its grandest opera house a turn under the spotlight. The pleasure of Vienna is that both worlds sit within an easy walk of one another.

Start with the noir. At the Prater funfair, the Wiener Riesenrad still turns exactly as it did when Harry Lime delivered his chilling cuckoo-clock speech high above the city. Ride it at dusk, when the light over the rooftops is at its best, in one of the roomy old cabins. A short stroll into the old town brings you to the Schreyvogelgasse, near the Mölker Bastei, where a single shaft of light first revealed Lime in a darkened doorway. The lane is unmarked, so look for the address, then linger in the quiet streets around it.

The grand counterpoint is the Vienna State Opera on the Ringstrasse, the setting for the tense assassination sequence in the first Mission: Impossible. It is a working house, so you can do this several ways: catch a performance, take a guided backstage tour, or simply queue for cheap standing-room tickets on the night and watch the spectacle for the price of a coffee.

The geography could not be friendlier. The Ringstrasse boulevard loops the historic core, and the opera, the old-town lanes and the start of the U-Bahn out to the Prater all sit along or just off it. You could trace Lime's haunts in a morning and be inside the opera house by evening.

For a base, stay inside or just beyond the Ring, within reach of the lanes around the Hofburg. Leave time for the Viennese ritual that no film can improve on: a slice of cake and a strong coffee in one of the old coffee houses, watched over by a waiter in a bow tie.