48 Fun Facts About Vienna

What did the Romans call their camp on the site of Vienna?

Vindobona's defensive ditch was filled in during a late-12th-century expansion and became the Graben, now a famous shopping street in the heart of Vienna.

In Vienna, the sausage that Germans and Americans call a wiener goes by what name?

Frankfurter: butcher Johann Georg Lahner, who trained in Frankfurt, is credited with launching it in Vienna in the early 1800s under that name, while other countries named it after Vienna instead.

Vienna became the seat of which dynasty in the 12th century, before the Habsburgs?

The Babenbergs ruled Austria from 976 to 1246; when Duke Henry II gave up Bavaria he set up court in Vienna, not at the old family seat of Klosterneuburg.

Which Ottoman sultan led the first siege of Vienna in 1529?

Suleiman the Magnificent had to abandon his heaviest siege guns when they bogged down in rain-soaked mud on the march, and he gave up the siege in under three weeks.

Which king commanded the relief army that broke the Ottoman siege at the Battle of Vienna in 1683?

John III Sobieski of Poland commanded the relief army that attacked from the Kahlenberg heights; Emperor Leopold I had fled Vienna before the siege began.

Who chaired the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15?

Klemens von Metternich, Austria's foreign minister, played host; the round of balls and banquets helped drag the talks out for months, and the Final Act came only days before Waterloo.

Vienna's grand Ringstrasse boulevard was built in the 19th century on the site of what?

The old city bastions and glacis, the open field of fire outside them, came down after an 1857 imperial decree so the walled centre could join the suburbs absorbed in 1850.

Which city overtook Vienna as the world's largest German-speaking city?

Berlin pulled ahead as both capitals boomed; Vienna passed two million by 1910, then shrank after 1918 when its empire broke up and many migrants went home.

Around 1900, Vienna was the second-largest city of which nationality, behind only its own capital?

Czechs: only Prague had more. They came to work in Vienna's brickyards and as tailors, cooks and maids, and a wave went home to the new Czechoslovakia after 1918.

The years 1919 to 1934, when Social Democrats ran Vienna and built public housing, are known as what?

Red Vienna paid for its housing with a steeply graduated rent tax that hit luxury flats hardest, plus levies on servants, big cars and riding horses.

Hitler proclaimed Austria's annexation in March 1938 from a Hofburg balcony overlooking which square?

Heldenplatz, 'Heroes' Square', is named for its two equestrian statues of Austrian commanders, Archduke Charles and Prince Eugene of Savoy; the 1938 rally made it shorthand for the Anschluss.

In four-power Vienna after 1945, who controlled the historic first district?

All four, rotating each month: the first district was an international sector, policed by jeep patrols carrying one soldier from each army, the famous 'four in a jeep'.

What did Austria promise Moscow in 1955 to end its four-power occupation?

Permanent neutrality: Austria pledged it in Moscow in April 1955, the treaty was signed in Vienna a month later, and parliament made it law the day after the troops' deadline to leave.

Which film, written by Graham Greene, uses occupied post-war Vienna as its backdrop?

The Third Man made a star of Anton Karas, an unknown Viennese zither player whom director Carol Reed picked to write and perform the whole score.

Orson Welles's Harry Lime flees Vienna's police through what?

The city's sewers became world-famous through the chase, which used members of Vienna's real police sewer brigade, and the tunnels became a guided-tour attraction.

Schonbrunn Zoo, in the grounds of Vienna's imperial summer palace, holds what distinction?

The world's oldest zoo still operating began in 1752 as Emperor Francis I's menagerie; its enclosures fan out around a central pavilion where the imperial couple sometimes took breakfast.

Which two Cold War leaders held a tense 1961 summit in Vienna?

Kennedy and Khrushchev got nowhere on divided Germany in two days of talks, and ten weeks later the Cold War's most famous wall went up.

The Pummerin, St Stephen's great bell, was first cast from what?

Ottoman cannons captured when the siege of 1683 was broken supplied the metal; the bell crashed down and shattered in the cathedral fire of 1945, and its fragments went into the bell that hangs there now.

The Hofburg, a seat of rulers since 1279, has housed whose office since 1946?

The President of Austria moved in 1946 into the Leopoldine Wing, the apartments where Empress Maria Theresa had lived; the Chancellor works next door on Ballhausplatz.

The Spanish Riding School in the Hofburg trains which breed of horse?

Lipizzaner horses descend partly from Spanish stock, which is what the school's name refers to; the breed itself is named after the imperial stud at Lipizza, founded in 1580 in today's Slovenia.

The Vienna Boys' Choir traces its origin to a 1498 letter from which emperor?

Maximilian I ordered his court to hire a singing master, two basses and six boys; when the court chapel was dissolved after 1918, the choir was refounded in 1924 as a private body.

Vienna's Riesenrad Ferris wheel went up in 1897 to mark what?

Emperor's jubilee celebrations, for 50 years on the throne, were the occasion; by 1914 the wheel was a stunt stage, when a circus director sat on a horse on a cabin roof for a film scene.

Why was Vienna's Riesenrad Ferris wheel never demolished under a 1916 permit?

Lack of money in wartime meant the wheel simply stayed up; when fire later burned out all 30 cabins in the Second World War, only every second one was replaced, which is why it carries 15.

The Prater hosted which international event in 1873?

The Vienna World's Fair drew about 7 million visitors, far fewer than hoped, after a stock-market crash and a cholera outbreak hit the city that same year.

Who makes the Vienna Philharmonic's major decisions?

Its musicians: the players' assembly runs the orchestra by vote and chooses who conducts it, a model set when the composer Otto Nicolai led the first concert in 1842.

Vienna's New Year's Concert traditionally ends with which piece, as the audience claps along?

The Radetzky March, by Johann Strauss the elder, is the final encore; the Blue Danube comes just before it, its opening bars interrupted for a New Year greeting from the stage.

Vienna's New Year's Concert has been held since 1939 in the Golden Hall of which building?

The Musikverein hosted the very first one on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1939, not New Year's Day; the rival Konzerthaus is home to the Vienna Symphony instead.

The Vienna State Opera opened in 1869 with which Mozart opera?

Don Giovanni opened the new court opera on 25 May 1869; after bombs gutted the house in March 1945, it reopened in 1955 with a different choice, Beethoven's Fidelio.

Which composer was Vienna-born, alongside Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and the two Johann Strausses?

Franz Schubert was the local, born in 1797 in a suburb that is now Vienna's ninth district; Mozart came from Salzburg, Beethoven from Bonn and Haydn from the village of Rohrau.

Beethoven lies in Vienna's Central Cemetery, but in which cemetery, now a park, was he first buried in 1827?

Wahring Cemetery closed in 1873 and later became a public park, where Beethoven's old gravestone has been kept although his remains were moved across the city in 1888.

Which Viennese pop star's 'Rock Me Amadeus' is the only German-language US Hot 100 No. 1?

It held number one for three weeks in 1986; Falco is buried in the Central Cemetery.

Sigmund Freud lived and worked at which Vienna address from 1891 until he fled in 1938?

Berggasse 19 is now the Sigmund Freud Museum, but the famous couch is missing: Freud took his furniture with him when he fled in 1938, and it has stayed in his last home in London.

Gustav Klimt's The Kiss hangs in which Vienna museum?

The Belvedere has had it since 1908, when the state bought it from the show where Klimt first exhibited it under the title 'Lovers'; the name The Kiss came later, from the museum.

Which architect designed Vienna's Karlsplatz Stadtbahn station, Postal Savings Bank and Steinhof Church?

Otto Wagner designed the Stadtbahn's bridges and viaducts as well as its stations; the Secession building near Karlsplatz is not his but Joseph Maria Olbrich's, who had joined Wagner's office in 1893.

Which four future dictators and revolutionaries all lived in Vienna in 1913?

Stalin, Hitler, Trotsky and Tito were all nobodies then: Stalin arrived on a false passport, Trotsky was an exiled journalist, Hitler slept in a men's hostel and Tito worked at a Daimler car plant nearby.

A Wiener schnitzel is traditionally made from which meat?

Veal is the only meat that may be sold under the name in Austria; a pork version, which is cheaper, has to be labelled 'Wiener Schnitzel vom Schwein'.

Sachertorte pairs chocolate cake and glaze with a layer of which jam?

Apricot jam goes under the glaze in both rival versions: Hotel Sacher and the Demel pastry shop fought for decades over who baked the original, until the dispute ended in 1963 with Sacher keeping the name.

Vienna is unusual among world capitals for having what within its city limits?

Its own vineyards cover the hills on the city's edge, around Grinzing and Nussdorf; the local speciality is Gemischter Satz, made from different grape varieties planted, picked and pressed together.

What is a traditional Viennese wine tavern called, from the word for 'this year's'?

Heuriger means 'this year's': the word covers both the young wine and the tavern pouring it, which hangs a bunch of fir twigs over the door to show it is open.

Why did Vienna's U-Bahn long skip from U4 to U6?

Shelved plans: planners reserved the number in the 1960s, but no U5 route got approved, and part of one went to the U2 instead. A real U5 was only agreed in 2014.

Vienna's free Donauinselfest, held each summer on a Danube island, is billed as what?

The world's largest open-air music festival is the organisers' own count, about three million visits over three free days; those organisers are not promoters but Vienna's Social Democratic party.

What is the tallest structure in Austria, at 252 metres?

The Danube Tower (Donauturm), a concrete viewing tower with a revolving restaurant, was built for a 1964 garden show and still edges out the city's tallest skyscraper, the DC Tower.

In 1980 Vienna became the third United Nations headquarters city, after which two?

New York and Geneva came first, and Nairobi followed later; Austria built the UN's Vienna complex and rents it out for a symbolic one schilling, about seven cents, a year for 99 years.

Founded in 1365 by Duke Rudolph IV, the University of Vienna is the oldest university in which area?

Today's German-speaking world is the careful wording, because Prague's university is older; Rudolph set up his to rival it, and the Pope at first refused it a theology faculty.

Vienna's ball season, with the Opera Ball as its high point, runs through which festive season?

Carnival, known locally as Fasching, opens on 11 November at 11:11 with a public waltz in the city centre; the Opera Ball comes near its end, on the last Thursday before Ash Wednesday.

The Votivkirche was built in thanks for which emperor surviving an 1853 assassination attempt?

Franz Joseph's brother, the future Emperor of Mexico, led the appeal for a church of thanks after the attack; it took 23 years to build and was consecrated for the emperor's silver wedding in 1879.

Which nature reserve in western Vienna began as Emperor Ferdinand I's hunting ground in 1561?

Lainzer Tiergarten was fenced in for the court's hunts, and Joseph II swapped the fence for a stone wall that mostly still stands; since 1919 the public has shared it with wild boar and deer.

Why was Vienna's Donauinsel, a long artificial island in the Danube, built between 1972 and 1988?

As flood protection: the island is the strip left between the river and the New Danube, a relief channel dug to carry high water; the beaches and bike paths that made it the city's playground came second.