Imperial and Amazing Vienna
Vienna, the city where the Habsburgs, rulers of an empire, left their mark of grandiosity all over the place, the city of cultural effervescence, the city of palaces and castles, the city where old and new unite to create impressions beyond words.
Vienna holds a special place on the panoply of capital cities of the world, not only because of its innumerable attractions, but also because it is one of the finest cities on a trip that included Budapest and Munich and marked something unique in my adult life. Since then I have spent a couple of New Years Eves there and it only completed the image I got about this city at my first visit. I can call it the city of enlightenment, the city that recaptured the spirit of the ancient river Danube through the wonderful music of Richard Strauss, the city of ball rooms, the city of imperial glory, nobility and a new class of bourgeoisie. A bourgeoisie that spears nothing in order to get some of the glitter the centuries old families are letting to fall, willingly, but more often forced by pecuniary reasons.
Busy, bustling Vienna suddenly becomes very generous and calms down once you entered the “Ring”. The street bearing this name surrounds what is now the very heart of the city, the place where it all happens. Or, more accurately, the historic center of the city where you have to find a hotel and be able to walk around to and from at least at your first visit there. You will see the beautiful building of the Votiv Church, the University, the City Hall, the two twin museums, the Fine Arts Museum, that gathers treasures of the world, mostly classic, and the Museum of Natural History, the Parliament Palace and the Palace of Justice. They are some of the numerous beautiful buildings of the neo-classical style that only completed the baroque spirit Vienna still holds. These are bordering the core and while walking on the Ringsstrasse and admiring them, one is gradually prepared to actually enter the old city and get a glimpse of history.