Vienna: history and heritage

About Vienna: history and heritage

By the ULTIMATE Vienna Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Vienna was the seat of the Habsburgs for more than six centuries, and it still feels like the capital of an empire much larger than today’s Austria. Its palaces, its Ringstrasse and its coffee houses were built for a monarchy of many peoples, and its music, from Mozart to the Strauss waltzes, was heard across Europe.

At a glance

Population: just over two million (Statistik Austria, 2025), the first time since the early twentieth century that Vienna has passed that mark.

Names through history: Vindobona (Roman), Wenia, Wien.

The capital of an empire of many peoples, and still a city that sets its clock by the concert and the coffee house.

Shaped by: Rome, the Babenberg dukes, the Habsburgs (1278–1918), the multinational Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the Austrian republic.

UNESCO World Heritage: the Historic Centre of Vienna (2001) and the Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn (1996); Viennese coffee house culture is listed as national intangible heritage.

Vindobona

Celts lived by the Danube before the Romans built the legionary fort of Vindobona in the first century AD, on the frontier of the empire. The emperor Marcus Aurelius died here or nearby in 180. Roman foundations can be seen beneath Michaelerplatz and at the Römermuseum on Hoher Markt.

The Habsburgs

The Babenberg dukes made Vienna their seat in the twelfth century, and in 1278 the Habsburgs took control. They stayed until 1918, ruling an empire that at times stretched from Spain and the Netherlands to Bohemia, Hungary and the Balkans. St Stephen’s Cathedral, with its patterned tile roof, rose from the fourteenth century; the Hofburg grew wing by wing over six centuries; Schönbrunn became the summer palace.

Two Ottoman sieges

Ottoman armies besieged Vienna in 1529 and again in 1683, when a relief army broke the siege at the Battle of Vienna. Legend links the first Viennese coffee houses to the sacks of coffee left behind; whatever the truth, coffee house culture took root, and the Baroque city of palaces and churches, such as the Karlskirche and the Belvedere, rose in the decades after 1683.

The Ringstrasse

In 1857 the emperor ordered the old city walls torn down. In their place came the Ringstrasse, a boulevard lined with the State Opera, the Parliament, the City Hall, the University, the Burgtheater and the twin museums of art and natural history, each in the historical style thought fitting: Gothic for the City Hall, Greek for the Parliament, Renaissance for the museums.

Vienna 1900

Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert had made Vienna the capital of classical music; the Strauss family made it the city of the waltz. Around 1900 a new generation broke with the past: the Secession building (1898), Gustav Klimt’s golden paintings, Otto Wagner’s Steinhof church and stations, Adolf Loos, Egon Schiele and Sigmund Freud, whose home is now a museum. The city’s Jewish community, central to that flowering, was destroyed in the Holocaust, a loss Vienna remembers at the Judenplatz memorial.

The modern city

After 1918 Vienna became the capital of a small republic, and built great blocks of municipal housing that still shape its outer districts. Today it is a seat of the United Nations, with one of the busiest concert calendars in the world, from the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert to the opera, and a MuseumsQuartier of contemporary art in the old imperial stables.

Our advice: walk the Ringstrasse by tram or on foot, step into the Café Central or Café Sperl for coffee and cake, and buy standing-room tickets at the State Opera on the day: among the best value seats in classical music.

Sources

Population: Statistik Austria, population at the beginning of the year. History: Wien Museum; UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Historic Centre of Vienna; Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn); Austrian Commission for UNESCO (intangible heritage); Vienna Tourist Board; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Vienna”.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Vienna: history and heritage before you go.