Vienna: History And Profile

By Author: Rob Wagner
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Vienna means cafe culture, music and wine. Where else can one so contentedly spend all day sitting in a cafe, reading the newspaper, sipping a Viennese coffee or drinking a glass or two of wine?

Roman Vindobona, founded in the year 15 CE, was completely destroyed by the Germanic migrations of the fourth and fifth centuries. With the Roman legions long gone, only a small settlement remained. The name Vindobona is likely a version of the Celtic "Vedunia", which means "torrent", a reference to the settlement's location on the banks of the snow fed Danube River.

Vienna was a city of doubtful reputation at the end of the twelfth century. Its ruler, Duke Leopold V, was complicit in the kidnap of the English king, Richard Lionheart, on his way home from the Crusades. The two noblemen had butted heads during the Third Crusade.

Forced to stop in Vienna, Richard was recognised and seized. An enormous ransom was paid for his release, roughly twenty five tons of silver, a huge sum for those days. The duke used the silver to found a mint, the vast profits from which enabled him to grow the city and build new fortification ...
... walls. Although Emperor Henry VI had given his blessing to the duke's illicit activities, the pope had not, and in 1194 Leopold V was excommunicated.

The first version of Vienna's cathedral was completed in 1147 as a small parish church, and was actually too large for the tiny population of Vienna at that time. The city would not become important for another ten years, after it was named capital of the Duchy of Austria. A hundred years later, the original church was replaced by one built in the Romanesque style. Its facade, known as the Roman Towers, was preserved when construction of a Gothic church began in 1340.

In 1359, Duke Rudolf IV laid the cornerstone for the soaring Gothic nave, which was completed in 1474. Vienna's early dukes had not been successful in elevating the town to a bishop's see, which was necessary for St. Stephen's to be declared a cathedral; it had always been simply a church within the diocese of Passau. It did not become the seat of a bishop, and thus formally a cathedral, until 1469. St. Stephen's has undergone many changes since then. As tastes changed, the interior and exterior were mofified to reflect the times. Recent restoration has uncovered traces of older versions of Vienna's beloved "Steffl", as the church is known locally.

The sixteenth century was very much focused on rebuilding Vienna's fortifications, which had been damaged during the Turkish siege of 1529. Work was not quite finished when the Turks returned in 1684. They were stopped just outside Vienna, the gateway to Europe, and never got that far again. Bombardment from Turkish positions in what is today the Wienerwald ("Vienna Woods") left the city badly damaged in the wake of the Turkish retreat.

Rebuilding Vienna brought a large number of baroque architects to the city. The most outstanding constructions from that time are noble and royal residences, including the Schonbrunn, Liechtenstein, Schwarzenberg and Belvedere Palaces.