Vienna

Vienna is the capital of Austria, a city on the Danube in the east of the country at the edge of the Vienna Woods. The composers Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert all worked in the city. Its coffeehouse culture is on the UNESCO list of intangible heritage.

A Roman camp called Vindobona stood on the site in the 1st century, guarding the Danube frontier. The Babenberg dukes made Vienna their seat in the 12th century, and the Habsburgs ruled from the city from the late 13th century until the end of the First World War. It grew into the capital of an empire that reached from Bohemia to the Balkans. In 1857 Emperor Franz Joseph ordered the old walls to be pulled down, and the Ringstrasse, a boulevard of public buildings and palaces, was laid out in their place. Vienna became the capital of the Republic of Austria in 1918.

Manner, founded in Vienna, makes hazelnut wafers sold in pink packages. Julius Meinl, also based in the city, roasts coffee and supplies coffeehouses. The Augarten porcelain factory makes tableware and figurines by hand in a baroque palace in the city.

Schönbrunn Palace, the summer home of the Habsburgs, has formal gardens, a hilltop colonnade and the oldest zoo in the world that is still open. St. Stephen's Cathedral has a tall Gothic spire and a roof of colored tiles in a zigzag pattern. The Vienna State Opera, opened on the Ringstrasse in the 1860s, stages a different opera almost every night of the season. The Vienna Philharmonic plays its New Year's Concert of waltzes in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein.