Vienna
Austria's capital, imperial city of music
Vienna keeps the manners of an empire it no longer rules. Grand Habsburg palaces, the looping Ringstrasse boulevard, gilded concert halls, and coffeehouses where time seems to stop all speak of a capital built for a realm that once stretched across central Europe. The Danube slides past the edge of the city, the Vienna Woods press in from the west, and the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and the Strauss family still fills the opera house. Around two million people live in one of the world's most consistently livable cities.
Vienna sits at the eastern foot of the Alps where they meet the Danube, in a basin that opens toward the Hungarian plain. Elevation ranges from about 151 metres along the river to over 540 metres in the wooded hills of the Wienerwald that rim the city to the west. The Danube and its parallel canal thread through the urban area, and a temperate climate brings warm summers and cold winters. The compact historic core, ringed by the Ringstrasse, is encircled in turn by leafy outer districts and vineyards.
The Romans built a frontier garrison called Vindobona here on the Danube, and the medieval town grew into the seat of the Habsburg dynasty, who ruled the Holy Roman Empire and then Austria-Hungary from the city for centuries. Vienna twice withstood Ottoman sieges and flowered as the musical capital of Europe. Today it is the capital of the Austrian republic, a hub of diplomacy hosting United Nations agencies and OPEC, and a city renowned for its quality of life and its enduring café culture.