The Habsburgs: 600 Years of Power, Madness, and Fall

The south tower of St. Stephen's Cathedral stands 137 meters. In 1683, when Ottoman Turks besieged Vienna for the second time, watchmen in that tower tracked every enemy movement. The Habsburgs prayed here, married here, and were buried here — though not entirely. Their funerary ritual was unique: the body went to the Imperial Crypt, the heart to the Herzgruft at the Augustinerkirche, and the entrails to the catacombs below this very cathedral. Each organ in a different place, each with its own ceremony. In the catacombs beneath your feet lie the remains of more than 10,000 people.…

The Hofburg grew for 600 years without a plan — each emperor added a wing, a dome, a courtyard. The result: 2,500 rooms, 18 wings, and 19 courtyards, inhabited by 24 emperors. Franz Joseph lived in 20 rooms and woke at 4 a.m. every day. His wife, Empress Sisi, loathed court protocol and obsessively measured her waist: 50 centimeters at age 45. She was assassinated in Geneva in 1898 — stabbed with a file by an anarchist. Franz Joseph reigned 68 years — the longest in Habsburg history — and died here in 1916, at 86, signing documents until his final day.…

Beneath the Kapuzinerkirche in central Vienna rest 149 members of the Habsburg family. The first coffin arrived in 1633. The last in 2011 — Otto von Habsburg, grandson of the last emperor, died at age 98. The most imposing coffin belongs to Maria Theresa: designed by herself, decorated with crowns, skulls, and weeping angels. Next to it, her husband Francis I's — simpler, as he wished. Franz Joseph's is surprisingly austere for a man who ruled half a continent. The entrance protocol did not change for centuries: the chamberlain knocks, the Capuchin asks who is there. The list of imperial title…

On March 13, 1938, Adolf Hitler appeared on the balcony of the Neue Burg, the Hofburg wing facing this square. Below, 200,000 people cheered in delirious enthusiasm. It was the largest rally in Austrian history. Hitler proclaimed the annexation of Austria into the Third Reich — the Anschluss. Austria ceased to exist as an independent nation. In the following days, Viennese Jews were forced to scrub streets on their knees while neighbors watched and laughed. Austria took decades to acknowledge that those 200,000 were not bystanders — they were participants. The square's name means "Heroes' Squa…

Franz Joseph ordered Vienna's medieval walls demolished in 1857 to build the Ringstrasse: 5 kilometers of monumental boulevard with the Opera, the museums, Parliament, City Hall, and the Burgtheater. It demonstrated that the Austro-Hungarian Empire stood at the center of Europe. Parliament, built in Greek style, was completed in 1883. Here, on November 11, 1918, the last emperor Karl I signed his abdication. The empire that had lasted six centuries and ruled 50 million people collapsed within days. The day before, the German Empire had also fallen. Four years of war had killed 17 million. Nobo…

The Vienna State Opera opened in 1869 with Mozart's Don Giovanni. Critics were brutal: they said it sat too low, barely rising above street level. Both architects died that year — one from a heart attack, likely from the reviews; the other in an accident. During World War II, Vienna was bombed 52 times. On the night of March 12, 1945 — exactly seven years after the Anschluss — a bomb set the Opera ablaze. It burned through the night. Viennese wept in the streets more than when they heard the Reich was collapsing. The Opera reopened in 1955, the same year Austria regained independence. In Vienn…

The Belvedere was built between 1714 and 1723 for Prince Eugene of Savoy, the general who defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Zenta and saved the Empire. It was so magnificent that the emperor later bought it out of embarrassment — he could not tolerate a general living in something grander than the imperial palace. Today the Belvedere houses Gustav Klimt's The Kiss (1908): Austria's most visited painting and symbol of the Vienna Secession, the art movement that invented modern design. In the Belvedere's Grand Salon, on May 15, 1955, ministers of the four occupying powers signed the State T…

Schönbrunn Palace has 1,441 rooms. Maria Theresa lived here with her 16 children. The young Mozart performed for her at age 6 in the mirror salon, and when he finished, leaped onto her lap and kissed her. Napoleon slept in the imperial bedroom in 1805 and again in 1809 — the second time as Vienna's master. His son, the King of Rome, died at Schönbrunn at age 21. Franz Joseph was born here in 1830 and died at the Hofburg in 1916, at 86, signing documents until the end. His successor Karl I abdicated two years later — the final act of Europe's oldest empire. Franz Joseph's private rooms, where h…