When you picture a European cultural institution, you probably imagine somewhere like the Louvre or the Prado, the Gulbenkian Foundation or the British Museum, the Teatro alla Scala or the Berlin Philharmonie. You are probably not thinking of a café – not, that is, unless you are Viennese. Vienna's stately and beautiful coffee-houses – which have survived two world wars, the end of an empire and the shameful expulsion and murder of nearly all the city's richly talented Jewish population – are arguably the city's most important cultural endowment. When Unesco listed them as part of the city's "intangible cultural heritage" in 2011, the citation described them as places where "time and space are consumed, but only coffee is found on the bill". This is charming but does not go far enough. Many factors – architectural, historical, social, political – go towards making Vienna's cafés the unique establishments they remain. The great cafés on the Ringstrasse, such as Landtmann, Schwarzenberg and Prückel, are astonishingly grand and generous in scale.

Ceilings hung with chandeliers are tall enough to permit a giraffe to sip a mélange (the deliciously mild Viennese version of a cappuccino) if it so wished. The grandeur extends to the waiters. Their abstracted hauteur gives them the appearance of exiled eminences. You may find they studiously ignore you, though their mood can suddenly change. Above all, they are not excessively eager to please, unlike the baristas of a well-known café chain who are expected to "work at pace" and "create a sense of fun". antler chandelier for sale craigslistSuch concepts are anathema to the connoisseur of Viennese cafés.chandelier lyrics ace combat 6 These waiters and waitresses have status and dignity, and that spills over in a strange way onto the customer. chandelier from footloose movie

Above all it adds to the precious sense of peace and settledness, conducive to thought and reflection rather than frenetic jabber. What makes them such an important part of the city's heritage is that they are places where culture is made as much as it is consumed. No cultural history of the city, especially of the period from the 1870s to the Anschluss in 1938, graced by writers such as Hofmannsthal, Zweig, Freud and Kraus, musicians such as Brahms, Mahler and Schoenberg, painters such as Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele, architects such as Loos and Olbrich, could be written without reference to the cafés where these cultural figures gathered, read, talked and wrote. Their cafés were not always as peaceful as they seem to be today. In the late 19th and early 20th century, when absolutist Habsburg rule included censorship and clamp-downs on political extremism, they were often hotbeds of radicalism. Police informers mingled with the customers and there were bitter rivalries between various groups centred on different coffee houses.

In 1896 the satirist Karl Kraus began a feud with the influential critic Hermann Bahr, who held court at the Café Griensteidl. In a celebrated essay called The Demolished Literature, Kraus attacked the Griensteidl "Jung Wien" coterie, which included Hofmannsthal and Arthur Schnitzler, for being morbidly obsessed with their nerves. In 1900 Bahr successfully brought a defamation suit against him. All this makes Vienna's coffee-houses seem like nostalgic relics of a scintillating past. The whole city can appear like that, of course, but the historic cafés still hum with their own special life. Those who find Vienna, and Austria in general, insufferably smug might like to pop in to Café Bräunerhof. This was the favoured haunt of Austria's most celebrated post-war novelist, and excoriator of all things Austrian, Thomas Bernhard. In 1986 Bernhard agreed to be interviewed in the Bräunerhof by the critic Werner Wögerbauer. The interview found Bernhard in splendidly acerbic form: "The young people of today," he announced, "are running into the arms of death at age 12, and they're dead at 14."

My own favourite is Prückel on the Ringstrasse opposite the MAK. It manages to be liberal, unstuffy and stately all at the same time. I know that at one of its art deco tables someone is writing a poem, or an essay; literature and culture have not been completely demolished.The tight supply of homes for sale across the nation has turned this spring into a strong seller's market, but not all homes will move, especially if they are outdated. That is why smart sellers are investing in smart technology to lure potential buyers. "That's your ticket to selling the house," said Sabine Schoenberg, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based home-improvement expert and founder and CEO of real estate firm PrimeSites. Schoenberg specializes in updating old farmhouses with new technology. "I think technology really helps us get our lives more organized and simpler in a way," Schoenberg said. "If you have an old farmhouse, you still have a front door, so why not install a smart door lock, especially if it's a second home?"

Nearly half of all Americans either already have smart home technology or plan to invest in it this year, according to a survey released in January that was conducted by Harris Polls for Coldwell Banker Real Estate. Seventy percent of those surveyed with smart home technology said buying their first product made them more likely to buy another. It is a myth that retrofitting an older home with smart technology is too difficult or too expensive. When it comes to selling a home, more than half of current homeowners said they would install smart home technology because they thought it would sell the home faster. Additionally, 65 percent of them said they would pay $1,500 or more to upgrade — but that may not be necessary. "A few hundred dollars will have an impact," Schoenberg said. "The price of technology on these gadgets has come so far down." She cited competition among the makers of smart door locks and other technologies. She also said buyers today will ask if the Wi-Fi is staying, just as they would have asked in the past about a chandelier or refrigerator.

is a smart doorbell with security camera, starting at $199. Learning thermostats from companies such as Nest and Honeywell will also not break the bank. More extensive smart products, such as Crestron's Pyng Home Automation System, can be more expensive, but the return on investment may be worth it. Where to start to be smart 1. Strong Internet connection and Wi-Fi network 2. Smart door locks 4. Smart climate controls 5. While smart technology is becoming nearly standard in newly built homes, putting it into existing homes is becoming much more prevalent and therefore giving sellers of those homes an advantage. Even sellers of larger homes, who may be marketing to older, move-up buyers, should consider it. Older generations are adopting certain types of smart home technology faster than younger ones. For instance, 40 percent of those over age 65 who own smart home products currently have smart temperature products, compared to 25 percent of millennials (ages 18 to 34), according to the Coldwell Banker survey.