Vienna

The story of Vienna

Vienna grew from Roman Vindobona, a Danube legion camp whose Celtic name may mean "white settlement"; tradition places Marcus Aurelius' death here in 180 AD, mid-Meditations. The medieval city that followed became the Habsburgs' seat for more than six centuries.

Twice besieged by the Ottomans, Vienna turned the 1683 rescue into legend, coffee beans left by the retreating army allegedly seeded its café culture, now UNESCO-listed intangible heritage where a newspaper and a single melange still buy you an afternoon. Around 1900 the city ran a fever of genius: Freud, Klimt, Mahler, Schnitzler, and Wittgenstein all shared its salons.

Curiosities: Schönbrunn's Tiergarten (1752) is the world's oldest zoo; the Zentralfriedhof holds more dead (about three million, Beethoven and Schubert included) than Vienna holds living; the Spanish Riding School's white stallions still perform baroque ballet; and Vienna perennially tops the world's most-liveable-city rankings.