Vienna audio guide: the stories of its sights

In 1914, a circus director rode a horse around the Wiener Riesenrad.

She did not stay on the ground. She sat in the saddle on the roof of one of its carriages, and the wheel carried her all the way round for a film. The Riesenrad, the Giant Ferris Wheel, stands in the Prater, in Vienna's Leopoldstadt district. It was built in 1897 to celebrate 50 years on the throne of Emperor Franz Joseph I. Its highest point is 64.75 metres above the ground.

Today it is one of the landmarks of Vienna. That circus director was called Madame Solange d'Atalide, and she was only the first of many performers. The wheel became a stage and a film set. In 1949, a long sequence in The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed and starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten, made it part of film history. In 1987, a scene in the James Bond adventure The Living Daylights was shot here too.

And a drummer once mounted his kit on a platform and played a solo over the rooftops of Vienna for two full rotations. Today, an exhibition hall called the Panoramamuseum stands beside the wheel. In eight rebuilt carriages, it tells the history of the Prater. Since 2022, there has also been an open glass platform between two of the carriages, for a ride with nothing but air around you.

Imagine a six-year-old boy finishing his piano piece at Schönbrunn Palace, then leaping straight onto the Empress's lap and kissing her.

That is what young Mozart did, to her great delight. Schönbrunn was the summer residence of the Habsburgs in Vienna. Work on the baroque palace began in 1695 under Leopold I, to designs by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. It was completed under Maria Theresa. The concert was probably held in the Hall of Mirrors, or in the neighbouring Pink Room.

Mozart played before the Empress and her court. Then came the leap, the embrace and the kiss. The Hall of Mirrors takes its name from seven large crystal mirrors. They reflect one another and make the room seem bigger than it is. Today palace and gardens are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed in 1996. In the park, the Palm House is the largest glasshouse on the European mainland.

The park also holds the Tiergarten Schönbrunn, the oldest zoo in the world that still exists.

In April 1945, a captain in the German army refused an order to fire on Saint Stephen's Cathedral.

His name was Gerhard Klinkicht, and the order came from the city commander, Sepp Dietrich. Saint Stephen's is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Vienna, and the city's landmark. It is one of the most important Gothic buildings in Austria. Its first church was consecrated in 1147. So the cathedral was not shelled. Yet it burned all the same. Looters had set fire to buildings nearby, and the flames leapt across to the cathedral.

Inside the tower, the great bell, the Pummerin, broke apart. It smashed on the opening in the floor of the bell chamber and fell through into the tower hall below. Vienna rebuilt, and donations paid for the work. In 1952 the cathedral reopened, and a newly cast Pummerin was carried in. Today the south tower is open to the public up to a height of 72 metres, where you find the Türmerstube, the watchman's room.

And since autumn 2025, the tower stands once more without scaffolding.