VIENNA’s historic core was designated a World Heritage Site in 2001, and the way it is responding to this is an example to us all.

The sparkling condition of the city’s numerous newly cleaned and freshly painted historic buildings is gloriously conveyed in several new guidebooks. Vienna: a Guide to the Unesco World Heritage Sites by Manfred Wehdorn, with street maps and details of architecture in Vienna from 1850 to 1930, covers the city’s remarkable brand of Art Nouveau, known as the Vienna Secession Style, and the great revivalist civic buildings on the Ringstrasse. There is also the excellent New Architecture 1975-2005 by August Sarnitz.

Controversy has recently surrounded a number of World Heritage Sites because of the failure of governments to protect them from damaging development nearby, notably the Palladian villas of the Veneto. In Vienna, protection extends from the historic core to a buffer zone of equal size, ensuring that the skyline of the city is protected, as well as important views to and from the great palaces and public buildings.

Vienna’s conservation programme in recent years compares with the great stone cleaning programme initiated by de Gaulle in Paris in the 1960s. It has transformed the city with the pale stone of palaces and churches glistening in the sun and stuccoed buildings now as colourful as Prague. The glint of gold leaf is everywhere.

Vienna is rich in glorious architecture of every age except the Renaissance, when the Turks were virtually at the gates of the city for a century. It even has a Rachel Whiteread in the form of a Holocaust Memorial with a chilling solemnity that echoes Canova’s tomb of the Archduchess Maria Christine in the Augustinian Church.

Just as the thrill of Baroque Rome comes in exploring the architecture of Bernini and Borromini, so Vienna has two phenomenal geniuses in Fischer von Erlach and Lukas von Hildebrandt, designers of baroque palaces, churches and monasteries. Vienna is also the equal of London in the splendour of its Victorian buildings.

The new books celebrate the wealth of buildings by the great architect Otto Wagner, apartment blocks such as the flower-festooned Majolica House, the Hermes Villa for the Empress Elisabeth and Wagner’s own summer house, a Petit Trianon in the woods, as well as his bridges, viaducts and stations.

Equally resplendent is Olbrich’s 1898 Vienna Secession Building with startling bronze leaf cupola affectionately dubbed “the Assyrian water closet” by the Viennese.

The city fathers of Vienna have also taken immense care over their roofscape, conscious that the roof is the fifth façade. Vienna has a mantle of pretty pink-tiled roofs with astonishing highlights such as the “Hungarian stitch” roof of the cathedral even richer than the celebrated hospices in Beaune.

Vienna’s new architecture extends from jewel-like shopfronts by Hans Hollein to remarkable loft extensions by the architects Coop Himmelblau, which resemble giant locusts in steel and glass. Also intriguing are the new enclosures at Schönbrunn Zoo and the swooping hatbox oval of the 1990s Protestant church at Klosterneuburg.

Fierce argument surrounded the Vienna-Mitte development on the edge of the buffer zone. Here permits were issued in 2000 for four new towers reaching heights of 87m and 97m which would have been visible in many parts of the historic core. As a result of continuing public protest and the negotiations over World Heritage designation the project was withdrawn, a new competition held, and most buildings on the site reduced to less than 30m with just one freeform tower at one corner reaching 65m.

Meanwhile, new guidelines have been established banning high-rise buildings in sensitive locations, including the surroundings of parks and green areas and confining the expansion of attics in protected areas to within the existing roof heights.

Vienna is unique among European capitals in having a national park within city limits. The man-made Danube Island of the 1970s acts as a flood protection zone and saved the city from damage during the catastrophic floods of August 2002. The management of traffic is also a model, with intrusive road signs kept to a minimum and no absurd bollard forests as in England or France.

There is no intention of allowing Vienna to become frozen as a museum city. Conservation programmes have brought equal improvements to residential areas and businesses, with shop and hotel owners consulted. The quality of life improves for all.