Vienna is a City of Parks

Just arrived back from Vienna yesterday. Climbed off the train and went straight to class, actually. Anyway, Vienna is a beautiful city. It's so green and treelined and parkfilled, as the title suggests. It was a beautiful weekend, and we spent a lot of time sitting in parks near ponds with swans and watching families play. Very relaxing. Aside from the parks, the architecture of the city is very cohesive and beautiful. Most of the buildings are imperial baroque beauties from the Hapsburg era, with a couple Gothic cathedrals or city halls thrown in. But my favorite building of all was this one that completely stood out in the cityscape.

It's called the HundertWasser Haus, or something like that. Designed by HundertWasser, who also designed a couple of similar buildings in the neighborhood (also designed a gasworks and a school), none as spectacular as this one though.


It just springs to life out of the boring block it's located in. You can see here below that it looks as though it's moss creeping in on that beige building beneath it.


The street to the left there is pedestrian only, which is a good thing, as the architect lifted up parts of the cobblestones to make hills, and planted trees willy-nilly in the road. One can also see the vibrant green on the building's many trees. They pop out of every balcony and nook and cranny.


My favorite part of the whole thing, I think, is this fountain and the alcove under the building. The black part of the building you can see goes all the way under the building, creating a little picnic place. Also, something I couldn't really fit in to the picture, on top of the building are two Turkish looking turrets. Pretty fun.


Here is the Royal Hapsburg Palace, or something. The Palace is actually named after that fountain you see at the foot of the hill. This place extends forever into huge gardens with labyrinths and pools and everything. Like a mini-Versailles, in fact parts of Marie Antoinette were filmed here.


This is the view from the top of the hill looking back on Vienna. The yellow part is the actual palace.


This is the Danube diverted into Vienna, called the DonauKanal. Both sides are beautiful tree lined walks with lilacs and various other flowering trees. It was great.


This is StephansDom, I think named after the Hungarian St. Stephen, but I'm not sure. A beautiful Romanesque/Gothic structure, complete with Zsolnay tiling. I cut off the top of the steeple because it was only covered in scaffolding anyway. I realize this is a bad picture, but whatever.


This is on a cool square in the heart of Vienna. A large park to the right, the national library to the left, another Hapsburg palace behind me. The two domes are for the natural history museum and the art history museum.


That's all. I didn't get many pictures because I forgot to bring my camera the first two days we were walking around.