Vienna

Vienna is the capital city of Austria.

The big Danube River flows past it. Kings and emperors once lived in its palaces. Today people enjoy its parks, music and cozy cafés.

Vienna is the capital of Austria, in the northeast corner of the country. It sits beside the Danube, the second-longest river in Europe, between the foothills of the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains. About 2 million people lived there at the start of 2026.

Vienna is both a city and one of Austria's nine states. It is the smallest state by area but has the most people. The city is divided into 23 districts. At its heart is the Inner City, which you can easily explore on foot, ringed by a grand avenue called the Ringstrasse.

Vienna lies in the northeastern corner of Austria, where the Danube has cut its course between the foothills of the Alps and the Carpathians. The Vienna Basin was a crossroads of ancient trade routes: the amber route ran north–south from the Baltic, and the Danube linked east and west. The city covers 415 km² and is both a municipality and a Bundesland, the smallest of Austria's nine federal states in area but the largest in population, with 2,040,914 residents on January 1, 2026 (Statistics Austria).

Vienna was an imperial city from 1558 to 1918, seat of the Holy Roman Empire until 1806 and then capital of the Austrian and Austro-Hungarian empires. Britannica calls it among the least spoiled of the great old capitals of western Europe: its skyline is still dominated by the spire of St. Stephen's Cathedral and the giant Ferris wheel in the Prater, and its character remains much as before 1914. The city provides about a quarter of Austria's jobs and almost a third of its gross national product.

Vienna has many grand buildings.

The Hofburg was the emperors' palace. St. Stephen's Cathedral has a tall, pointed tower. The Opera House is where singers perform. In the Prater park, a giant wheel turns slowly in the sky.

St. Stephen's Cathedral stands in the very center of Vienna; its tall Gothic spire still rules the skyline. The Hofburg, the huge imperial palace, grew over 600 years and now holds museums, the national library and the Spanish Riding School, and part of it is the office of Austria's president.

The State Opera House was built from 1861 to 1869. The Belvedere is two palaces at either end of a terraced garden, built for Prince Eugene of Savoy in the early 1700s. Southwest of the center is Schönbrunn, the emperors' summer palace, with a great formal park. And in the Prater park, the giant Ferris wheel turns above the trees.

St. Stephen's Cathedral, one of Europe's chief Gothic buildings, keeps remnants of its 12th-century Romanesque church; rebuilding began in the early 14th century and lasted a century and a half, and its 20-ton bell, cast in 1711 from captured cannons, was recast after the cathedral burned in World War II. The Hofburg, the imperial palace, encloses several courtyards in buildings from the 13th to the late 19th century and houses the imperial treasury, the Austrian National Library, the Albertina, the Spanish Riding School and the president's offices.

Along the Ringstrasse rise mid-19th-century revivals of older styles: the Neoclassical Parliament, the neo-Gothic City Hall, the Burgtheater, the twin Natural History and Kunsthistorisches museums and the State Opera (1861–69). Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt built the Belvedere for Prince Eugene of Savoy: the Lower Belvedere (1714–16) and Upper Belvedere (1721–24), now museums of Austrian art; the Austrian State Treaty was signed there on May 15, 1955. Schönbrunn, in Hietzing, was the Habsburgs' summer residence. UNESCO inscribed the Historic Centre of Vienna in 2001.

Vienna's weather is mild most of the year.

Some summer days are hot, and in winter there can be snow and ice. In summer there are big rain showers. On hot evenings, a gentle breeze helps cool the city.

Vienna has a mild, temperate climate. Hills called the Vienna Woods shelter it from the weather of the Alps. Winds from the north bring cool summers and warm winters, while winds from the southeast bring summer heat and winter cold. Over the whole year, the temperature averages above 10 °C.

It is fairly dry: about 660 millimeters of rain fall in a year, much of it in summer downpours. On hot summer evenings the Viennese enjoy the Lüfterl, a light breeze from the northwest and west. Winters can bring snow and ice.

Lying east of the Alps, Vienna is shielded from their climatic influence by the Vienna Woods. Its weather comes from two directions: northerly winds bring cool summers and mild winters, and southeasterly winds bring heat in summer and cold in winter. Despite some summer fog and heat and winter snow and ice, Britannica describes a generally temperate and agreeable climate, with temperatures averaging above 10 °C over the year and fairly low rainfall, about 660 mm, much of it in summer downpours. The Lüfterl, a light northwest or west breeze, brings relief on hot evenings.

The city climbs from the Danube into the Vienna Woods in four rough terraces, with the Innere Stadt on the second lowest. The woods include Kahlenberg (483 m) and Hermannskogel (542 m), the highest point. The Vienna Woods and the Lobau, a wooded stretch of river land, are long-protected greenbelts.

People in Vienna love music.

They go to concerts and the opera. Families visit big parks and the Ferris wheel. In cafés, people sip coffee and eat cake with whipped cream.

Music is part of everyday life in Vienna. Concert halls and the opera are busy, and a good show gets people talking. The waltz, a spinning dance, became famous here in the 1800s with music by Joseph Lanner and the elder Johann Strauss.

The Viennese also love their cafés, where people sit for hours over coffee and cake, and their parks. The Prater, a former royal hunting ground, has been a public park since 1766. It covers about 1,295 hectares, with fairgrounds, a stadium and the giant Ferris wheel. Many international organizations are based in Vienna, including several United Nations agencies.

Britannica speaks of a Viennese Lebenskunst, an art of living, that has survived changing rulers: the same music in rebuilt concert halls, local wines in taverns on the outskirts, whipped cream at historic pastry shops and countless cafés. Gluck, Haydn and Mozart ushered in the city's first golden age of music, carried on by Beethoven and Schubert; later came the waltzes of Lanner and the elder Johann Strauss, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler, and, in the 20th century, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Around 1900 Vienna also nurtured Art Nouveau (the Secession) and the work of Sigmund Freud.

The Prater, a public park since 1766, covers 1,295 ha. Tourism brings about two million visitors a year. Vienna is a seat of world organizations: OPEC moved its headquarters here in 1965, the OSCE is based here, and the Vienna International Centre across the Danube houses the International Atomic Energy Agency and other UN agencies.