Vienna
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This article is about the capital of Austria. For other uses, see Vienna (disambiguation).
"Wien" redirects here. For other uses, see Wien (disambiguation).
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Coordinates: 48°12′N 16°22′E
Vienna
Wien
Capital city and state
From top, left to right: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna City
Hall, St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna State Opera, and Austrian
Parliament Building
Flag
Seal
Coat of arms
Vienna
Location within Austria
Show map of Austria Show map of Europe Show all
Coordinates: 48°12′N 16°22′E
Country Austria
State Vienna
Government
• Body State and Municipality Diet
• Mayor and Michael Ludwig (SPÖ)
Governor
• Vice Mayor Christoph Wiederkehr (NEOS)
Area
[1]
• Capital 414.78 km2 (160.15 sq mi)
city and state
• Land 395.25 km2 (152.61 sq mi)
• Water 19.39 km2 (7.49 sq mi)
Elevation 151 (Lobau) – 542 (Hermannskogel) m
(495–1,778 ft)
Population
(2018-01-01)[2]
• Capital 1,888,776
city and state
• Rank 1st in Austria (6th in EU)
• Density 4,326.1/km2 (11,205/sq mi)
• Metro 2,600,000
61.2% Austrian
• Ethnicity[3][4]
38.8% Other
Demonym(s) German: Wiener (m), Wienerin (f)
English: Viennese
Time zone UTC+1 (CET)
• Summer (DST) UTC+2 (CEST)
Postal code 1xx0 (xx = district number)
1300 (airport)
1400 (United Nations)
other 1yyy (postal boxes)[5]
ISO 3166 code AT-9
Vehicle registration W
HDI (2018) 0.940[6]
very high · 1st
GDP €94 billion (2017)[7]
GDP per capita €50,000 (2017)[7]
Seats in the Federal 11 / 61
Council
GeoTLD .wien
Website [Link]
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Official name Historic Centre of Vienna
Type Cultural
Criteria ii, iv, vi
Designated 2001 (25th session)
Reference no. 1033
UNESCO Region Europe and North America
Endangered 2017–present[8]
Vienna (/viˈɛnə/ ( listen);[9][10] German: Wien [viːn] ( listen)) is the national capital, largest
city, and one of nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's most populous city, with about
1.9 million inhabitants[3] (2.6 million within the metropolitan area,[11] nearly one third of the
country's population), and its cultural, economic, and political center. It is the 6th-largest
city by population within city limits in the European Union.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, Vienna was the largest German-speaking city in
the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, the
city had 2 million inhabitants.[12] Today, it is the second-largest German-speaking city
after Berlin.[13][14] Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including
the United Nations, OPEC and the OSCE. The city is located in the eastern part of
Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. These
regions work together in a European Centrope border region. Along with
nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In
2001, the city center was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In July 2017 it
was moved to the list of World Heritage in Danger. [15] Additionally to being known as the
"City of Music"[16] due to its musical legacy, as many famous classical musicians such
as Beethoven and Mozart who called Vienna home. Vienna is also said to be the "City
of Dreams", because of it being home to the world's first psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
[17]
Vienna's ancestral roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed
into a Medieval and Baroque city. It is well known for having played a pivotal role as a
leading European music center, from the age of Viennese Classicism through the early
part of the 20th century. The historic center of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles,
including Baroque palaces and gardens, and the late-19th-century Ringstraße lined with
grand buildings, monuments and parks.[18]
Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities,
the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first (in a tie with Vancouver and San
Francisco) for the world's most livable cities. Between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was
ranked second, behind Melbourne.[19][20][21][22][23] In 2018, it replaced Melbourne as the
number one spot [24] and continued as the first in 2019.[25] For ten consecutive years
(2009–2019), the human-resource-consulting firm Mercer ranked Vienna first in its
annual "Quality of Living" survey of hundreds of cities around the world. [26][27][28][29][30][31][32]
[33]
Monocle's 2015 "Quality of Life Survey" ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25
cities in the world "to make a base within." [34][35][36][37][38] The UN-Habitat classified Vienna as
the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013. [39] The city was ranked 1st globally
for its culture of innovation in 2007 and 2008, and sixth globally (out of 256 cities) in the
2014 Innovation Cities Index, which analyzed 162 indicators in covering three areas:
culture, infrastructure, and markets.[40][41][42] Vienna regularly hosts urban
planning conferences and is often used as a case study by urban planners. [43] Between
2005 and 2010, Vienna was the world's number-one destination for international
congresses and conventions.[44] It attracts over 6.8 million tourists a year.[45]
Contents
Etymology[edit]
See also Other names of Vienna
The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian name. The
etymology of the city's name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the
name comes from vedunia, meaning "forest stream", which subsequently produced
the Old High German uuenia (wenia in modern writing), the New High German wien and
its dialectal variant wean.[46]
Others believe that the name comes from the Roman settlement name of Celtic
extraction Vindobona, probably meaning "fair village, white settlement" from Celtic
roots, vindo-, meaning "bright" or "fair" – as in the Irish fionn and the Welsh gwyn –,
and -bona "village, settlement".[47] The Celtic word vindos may reflect a widespread
prehistorical cult of Vindos, a Celtic deity who survives in Irish Mythology as the warrior
and seer Fionn mac Cumhaill. A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in
the Czech, Slovak and Polish names of the city
(Vídeň, Viedeň and Wiedeń respectively) and in that of the city's district Wieden.[48]
The name of the city in Hungarian (Bécs), Serbo-Croatian (Beč; Cyrillic: Беч)
and Ottoman Turkish (Beç) has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally
referred to an Avar fort in the area.[49] Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in
other Central European Slavic languages means the river Danube, on which the city
stands.