The Birth of Modern Europe

Mr. Meyers

David Hochbaum

City Histories - Urban Development

Due 3/13/00

Vienna

Physical Properties

                Vienna is thought of by many as an artistic city, and the architecture of the city is no exception.  From its modest beginnings it soon became one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.  Although it was never as romantic as Paris or as dignified as London, it found a common ground between the two.

                Vienna was founded by the Romans in the first century AD as a fortified camp as a part of their frontier defenses.  Its location on the Danube river not only led to its rise as one of Europe's premier centers of trade (the first permanent bridge over the Danube was constructed between 1435 and 1440), but also made it significantly easier to defend.  City defenses were under constant construction during the 15^th and 16^th centuries, and because of this, Vienna was able to withstand Turkish attacks in 1529 and 1683.  Fortifications were built around the Altstadt, the old city of Vienna, but suburbs began to spring up outside them as the city became increasingly crowded.  They were destroyed during the sieges but quickly rebuilt.  After the siege of 1683, the legal boundary of the city was expanded to include the suburbs and so a new series of fortifications was built to defend them.  Amusingly, these walls were now not to protect against invaders, but against revolts by native Austrians.  They even went so far as to build the wall with fortified bastions and a moat.  The walls represented the power of the government and were used to keep the workers who lived in the suburbs in place.  When Napoleon captured the city in 1809, he destroyed many of the fortifications.  The ruins, which lay untouched until 1857, represented the end of the Altstadt and the beginning of the suburbs.

                While Vienna was a cultural center, its roots come from that of a defensive stronghold.  It was only later that the city was able to take advantage of its many geographic advantages, the greatest of which was its location on the Danube River.  The Danube, which is the second largest river in Europe, is the only major European river that flows from west to east.  Because of this, it was an important link from western Europe to the Black Sea.  Vienna's location on the river not only made them a trading power but also made it easier to defend, which was crucial in the years prior to 1848.

                One of the most beautiful monuments in the city was Schönbrunn Palace.  Located in Vienna's western suburbs, it was built by Emperor Leopold starting in 1696 and continuing through 1711.  In 1740 Maria Theresa moved in and made it the center of her government.  Like many other of the palaces built in Vienna in that time period, it was designed in a new form of architecture, the Austrian baroque.  Many of the designers of these palaces were not native Austrians, but foreigners.  Many of the architects were Italian, and when designing these palaces they were not only influenced by Italian and neoclassical Austrian architecture, but they also were influenced by the Renaissance, the Orient, and France.  Both the outside and inside of the Schönbrunn Palace show the baroque architecture that dominated the period: the front façade with its 37 windows, the inside with columns supporting the curved ceilings.

                Vienna began to grow very quickly at the end of the Turkish sieges in 1683.  In 1700, the population was 100,000, and in the next century it more than doubled.  In terms of population, it was Europe's third largest city, behind only London and Paris.  However, the city was also very concentrated: what is now known as Budapest had less than one quarter the inhabitants of Vienna, but had almost the same number of buildings. 

                In comparison with Paris and London, Vienna grew to be much more of a cultural center than a political center. Vienna was the residence of the Holy Roman Emperor, and this was the main reason that much of the political power flowed there.  Of the three cities, Vienna was by far the most beautiful.  Its avenues were lined with trees, the air was fresh and crisp, and the mountains and hills that surrounded the city provided a beautiful view from any point in the city.  Even the wall and its surroundings had been decorated and turned into "walks of great beauty".  The narrow streets were lined with beautiful, expensively decorated mansions, and as the city grew and grew, because the walls limited the area of available land, these and other buildings increased in size.  Another product of the limited area was that the city was, in a way, inside-out in that the poverty which was usually found in inner cities was pushed out to the suburbs by the bourgeois and aristocrats, and in time the bourgeois too were forced to leave.

Gordon Brook-Shepherd, The Austrians: A Thousand Year Odyssey (New York, 1996) pp. 26-27, 113-114

Péter Hanák, The Garden and the Workshop (New Jersey, 1998) pp.3-9

Donald J. Olsen, The City as a Work of Art: London, Paris, Vienna (New Haven and London, 1986) pp. 58-65

A.E.G. Morris, History of Urban Form (1979) pp. 191-193