Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1
History
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1
Austria -- Description and travel; Germany -- Description and travel; Switzerland -- Description and travel
The Altstadt, or "old city," which contains about sixty thousand
inhabitants, is completely separated from the suburbs, whose population,
taking the whole extent within the outer barrier, numbers nearly half a
million.[B] It is situated on a small arm of the Danube and encompassed
by a series of public promenades, gardens and walks, varying from a
quarter to half a mile in length, called the "Glacis." This formerly
belonged to the fortifications of the city, but as the suburbs grew up
so rapidly on all sides, it was changed appropriately to a public walk.
The city is still surrounded with a massive wall and a deep wide moat,
but, since it was taken by Napoleon in 1809, the moat has been changed
into a garden with a beautiful carriage-road along the bottom around the
whole city.
It is a beautiful sight to stand on the summit of the wall and look over
the broad Glacis, with its shady roads branching in every direction and
filled with inexhaustible streams of people. The Vorstaedte, or new
cities, stretch in a circle, around beyond this; all the finest
buildings front on the Glacis, among which the splendid Vienna Theater
and the church of San Carlo Borromeo are conspicuous. The mountains of
the Vienna forest bound the view, with here and there a stately castle
on their woody summits.
There is no lack of places for pleasure or amusement. Besides the
numberless walks of the Glacis there are the imperial gardens, with
their cool shades and flowers and fountains; the Augarten, laid out and
opened to the public by the Emperor Joseph; and the Prater, the largest
and most beautiful of all. It lies on an island formed by the arms of
the Danube, and is between two and three miles square. From the circle
at the end of the Praterstrasse broad carriage-ways extend through its
forests of oak and silver ash and over its verdant lawns to the
principal stream, which bounds it on the north. These roads are lined
with stately horse-chestnuts, whose branches unite and form a dense
canopy, completely shutting out the sun.
Every afternoon the beauty and nobility of Vienna whirl through the
cool groves in their gay equipages, while the sidewalks are thronged
with pedestrians, and the numberless tables and seats with which every
house of refreshment is surrounded are filled with merry guests. Here on
Sundays and holidays the people repair in thousands. The woods are full
of tame deer, which run perfectly free over the whole Prater. I saw
several in one of the lawns lying down in the grass, with a number of
children playing around or sitting beside them. It is delightful to walk
there in the cool of the evening, when the paths are crowded and
everybody is enjoying the release from the dusty city. It is this free
social life which renders Vienna so attractive to foreigners and draws
yearly thousands of visitors from all parts of Europe....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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