Vienna Austria

Description: Vienna is the capital, largest city, and one of nine federal states of Austria. Vienna is Austria’s most populous city and its primate city, with about two million inhabitants (2.9 million within the metropolitan area, nearly one-third of the country’s population), and its cultural, economic, and political center. It is the fifth-largest city proper by population in the European Union and the largest of all cities on the Danube river by population. The city lies on the eastern edge of the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald)—the northeasternmost foothills of the Alps, that separate Vienna from the more western parts of Austria—at the transition to the Pannonian Basin. It sits on the Danube, and is also traversed by the highly regulated Wienfluss (Vienna River). Vienna is completely surrounded by Lower Austria, and lies around 50 km (31 mi) west of Slovakia and its capital Bratislava, 60 km (37 mi) northwest of Hungary, and 60 km (37 mi) south of Moravia (Czech Republic).

Population: 1,990,421

Demographics: As of 2022 more than 760,800 (38.8%) of the Viennese population have full or partial migrant background, mostly from Ex-Yugoslavia, Turkey, Germany, Poland, Romania and Hungary.

History: Evidence has been found of continuous habitation in the Vienna area since 500 BC, when Celts settled the site on the Danube. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the frontier city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north. In 976, Leopold I of Babenberg became count of the Eastern March, a district centered on the Danube on the eastern frontier of Bavaria. This initial district grew into the duchy of Austria. Each succeeding Babenberg ruler expanded the march east along the Danube, eventually encompassing Vienna and the lands immediately east. In 1145, Henry II, Duke of Austria moved the Babenberg family residence from Klosterneuburg in Lower Austria to Vienna. From that time, Vienna remained the center of the Babenberg dynasty. In 1440, Vienna became the resident city of the Habsburg dynasty. It eventually grew to become the de facto capital of the Holy Roman Empire in 1437 and a cultural center for arts and science, music and fine cuisine. Hungary occupied the city between 1485 and 1490. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Christian forces twice stopped Ottoman armies outside Vienna, in the 1529 siege of Vienna and the 1683 Battle of Vienna. The Great Plague of Vienna ravaged the city in 1679, killing nearly a third of its population. In 1804, during the Napoleonic Wars, Vienna became the capital of the newly formed Austrian Empire. The city continued to play a major role in European and world politics, including hosting the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15. The city also saw major uprisings against Habsburg rule in 1848, which were suppressed. After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Vienna remained the capital of what became the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From the late-19th century to 1938, the city remained a center of high culture and of modernism. A world capital of music, Vienna played host to composers such as Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and Richard Strauss. The city’s cultural contributions in the first half of the 20th century included, among many, the Vienna Secession movement in art, the Second Viennese School, the architecture of Adolf Loos, the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the Vienna Circle. The city of Vienna became the center of socialist politics from 1919 to 1934, a period referred to as “Red Vienna” (Das rote Wien). In 1938, after a triumphant entry into Austria, the Austrian-born German Chancellor Adolf Hitler spoke to the Austrian Germans from the balcony of the Neue Burg, a part of the Hofburg at the Heldenplatz. In the ensuing days the new Nazi authorities oversaw the harassment of Viennese Jews, the looting of their homes, and their on-going deportation and murder. During the November pogroms on 9 November 1938, 92 synagogues in Vienna were destroyed. Only the city temple in the 1st district was spared, as the data of all Jews in Vienna were collected in the adjacent archives. Austrian State Treaty was signed in May 1955. That year, after years of reconstruction and restoration, the State Opera and the Burgtheater, both on the Ringstraße, reopened to the public. The Soviet Union signed the State Treaty only after having been provided with a political guarantee by the federal government to declare Austria’s neutrality after the withdrawal of the allied troops. This law of neutrality, passed in late October 1955 (and not the State Treaty itself), ensured that modern Austria would align with neither NATO nor the Soviet bloc, and is considered one of the reasons for Austria’s delayed entry into the European Union in 1995. In the 1970s, Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky inaugurated the Vienna International Center, a new area of the city created to host international institutions. Vienna has regained much of its former international stature by hosting international organizations, such as the United Nations (United Nations Industrial Development Organization, United Nations Office at Vienna and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Elevation: 190 m

Climate: Oceanic humid continental climate. Average annual temperature in Vienna is 11 C (51 F), the average for July is 19 C (66 F), the average for January is – C (30 F).

Attractions: Schonbrunn Palace, Historic Center Of Vienna, Hofburg, Belvedere Museum, Wiennen Statsoper, Albertina, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek