April 2009
Easter in Vienna: Imperial Ages
My old friend Shane hopped the pond recently and took me along with him on a trip to Austria. It was a first for both of us and a chance for me to get back into an environment where I have some grasp of the language. That fact alone made the trip great.
Everything in Vienna is on a grand scale. Having been the seat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, everything in the city was built to be intimidating.
We stayed in a hotel near the oldest part of the city (not above), only ten minutes walk away. So most of our time there we spent wandering.
I thought Prague was infested with statues until I saw Vienna.
Vienna started as a
Roman Legionnaire camp called Vindabona in 15 BC. Before that it had been a
Celtic and then a Germanic settlement starting around 500 BC. The
camp was established to guard the frontier of the Roman empire. Every time
construction crews put a shovel in the dirt they hit layers of ruins.
These ruins were directly in front of some of the imperial buildings.
A small section of wall painting can still be seen on the interior of this house. It looks like some kind of organic pattern like a leaf design. It's amazing that the brush strokes can still be seen even though it is more than two thousand years old.
We also found a museum of Roman Vienna which was, of course, almost completely subterranean. Here are the remains of two houses. On the left can be seen an elevated floor that would have been used to heat the interior. Most likely it would have been the residence of a prominent Roman.
Vienna is a dream city for anyone who appreciates classical art. Mythical statuary can be seen almost at every turn.
Here we see the main gate to the imperial palace. Since the fall of the Roman empire, every great nation in Europe has tried to recapture the grandeur of Rome. This can clearly be seen all over Vienna.
