Vienna Day 2

 

Hapsburg Palace

We started our day with a bus ride tour of the ring road around the old walls of the city. The road is constructed where the city walls used to be. Many of the government buildings and museums are visible along the road as well as numerous parks. Our walking tour began at the Statue of Maria Theresa, who reigned the Hapsburg empire from 1746 to 1780. She had 16 children, 10 reached adulthood, and were married to other nobility.  We entered the Hapsburg Palace  through the gate remaining from the old city walls. The palace was built from the 15^th to the 19^th century and has over 2600 rooms.  We walked to St Steven’s Cathedral built in Romanesque and Gothic Style. It was destroyed in WW II but rebuilt in 7 years.

St. Stephens

In the afternoon, most of our group went to Schoenbrun Palace, the summer home of the Habsburgs. 

Schoenbrun Palace

I visited the House of Music, which is the museum of the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. It featured rooms for each of the major Viennese composers: Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mahler. The highlight was the piano keyboard staircase, which played music on each step.

Before dinner, we heard a lecture about Austria, Past and Present. The lecturer made it interesting as he had various audience members play the various emperors, empresses or composers. The Danube was the border between the Roman Empire and the barbarians. An important Roman fort was in Vienna right where St. Steven’s Cathedral now stands. Austria was ruled by the Hapsburgs from 1273 until 1918. The Hapsburg Empire included much of Germany, Hungary Spain, the Netherlands, parts of Italy, the Spanish colonies of the New World. The Habsburgs would marry the royalty of other countries and take over when those dynasties died out. Austria also was influential in classical music. For example, Mahler created the rules for Opera. After WW II, Austria was split up similarly to Germany between the US, USSR, UK, and France. In 1955, it became a neutral state, neither in NATO nor the Warsaw Pact.