Vienna is a real beauty. The city
is laced with grandiose squares,
dazzling palaces and dancing
fountains. It’s not hard to
imagine Mozart, Strauss and the
other classical composers that
once lived here strolling down
the elegant streets. When you’re
in Vienna, music and dancing is
never very far away.
AMAZING TREASURE
The wonders stashed inside
Vienna’s Imperial Treasury are
truly flabbergasting. There’s a
giant narwhal tooth said to
be the horn of a unicorn,
an ancient bowl which
might be the Holy Grail
and a thorn believed to
come from the crown
of Christ. The most
dazzling treasure has
to be the world’s largest
cut emerald, made for
Hapsburg King Ferdinand III
in 1641. It is 2,860 carats – as
heavy as half a bag of sugar.
TALL ORDER
The south tower of St
Stephan’s Cathedral is the
tallest in the city – and that’s
official! A 14th century law
declared that no building
in the old town of Vienna
could exceed it in height.
The north tower should
have matched the south’s
lofty 136.4m (447.5ft)
step for step, but it was
never finished.
THE MAESTRO
Ludwig van Beethoven lived in Vienna. The classical composer
became deaf at the age of 31, but astonishingly he continued
to write music for another quarter of a century. He used tools to
help him feel vibrations instead of sound. An interactive exhibit
at Vienna’s House of Music shows people what it would be like to
compose in silence.
THE WORLD’S
MOST FAMOUS
CHOCOLATE CAKE
If Prince Metternich’s court chef
had not been taken ill one day,
the world would never have had
the delicious Sachertorte
. The
famous creation was cooked
up in 1832 by a 16-year-old
apprentice chef called Franz
Sacher. The cake is cut into
three layers then sandwiched
together with apricot jam and
iced with velvety chocolate.
Every coffeehouse in Vienna
now has it on their menus.
TAKE ME TO THE BALL!
The ball season waltzes into the city just before Christmas
and runs right through to March. Anyone can buy tickets to
the 450 or so themed dances that are put on each year. The
ladies wear long flowing ball gowns and the men don dapper
tails or tuxedos. There is an Opera Ball, an Engineer’s Ball, a
Coffeehouse Owner’s Ball, a Doctor’s Ball, a Flower Ball and
even a sweets-themed Bonbon Ball! At midnight one of the
guests is elected to become Miss Bonbon. Afterwards her
weight in sweets is calculated and given to charity.
SNOW IN THE CITY
Viennese mechanic Erwin Perzy was
tinkering with a light bulb in 1900 when he
accidentally invented the snow globe. At
first he used semolina to make the snow
inside, but he refined this as
time went on. Perzy snow
globes are made
of glass, but their
snow recipe is still
top secret today.
Each miniature
scene inside
is carefully
painted
by hand.
AIRS ABOVE
THE Ground
The Spanish Riding School
in Vienna is the oldest
classical riding school in the
world. Its stables, right in the
city centre, house around 70
snow-white Lipizzaner horses.
The creatures are known for
their extraordinary prancing
moves. Riders train for years to
achieve ‘airs above the ground’,
where all four of the horse’s
hooves lift off the floor at
the same time.