15 Intriguing Facts About The City of Vienna

This time we are visiting Vienna which is the Capital of Austria to find out the things that make the city an interesting one.

You may have heard about some of them, but you will definitely find some information which you did not know before.

Do you know that one-fifth of the population of Austria lives in the capital, Vienna?
Schönbrunn Palace is the summer palace of the Habsburgs, has more than 1,440 rooms.
The Tiergarten Schönbrunn which was founded in 1752, is the oldest zoological garden in the world.
Vienna’s Central Cemetery (Zentralfriedhof) has over 2.5 million tombs which is more than the city’s living population.
The wine drinkers in Vienna have a magic word and it is ein Achtel (an eighth of a litre), which is the most common serving size in Vienna.
Legend has it that Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, the Polish military officer under the command of Jan Sobieski during the 1683 invasion of the Turks, opened Vienna’s first coffee house using coffee beans left by the retreating Ottoman Turks.
Located in the 19th district of Vienna Karl Marx-Hof is over 1 kilometre in length which automatically makes it the single longest residential building in the world.
In Vienna, they have mineral drinking water which comes out of the taps and fresh spring water comes through two pipelines directly from the Alps.
Did you know that Vienna is one of the few capital cities in the world which produce its own wine?
Vienna has been ranked as a city with the highest quality of living in the world.
The world’s oldest carousel is located at the Prater.
Vienna has its own island called the Donauinsel and it was constructed when the new bed for the Danube was dug to prevent flooding. Most of the excavated soil was heaped up to form an island which is 21 km long and only about 200 m broad, and because of its shape is often called the Spaghetti Island.
The oldest newspaper is considered to be from Vienna as it is the oldest surviving in the world is the Wiener Zeitung, which was started in 1703
During one night Michael Jackson wrote his famous hit ‘Earth Song’ in the Hotel Imperial which has been voted the world’s best hotel twice.
Before the Vienna City Hall was built, Emperor Franz Joseph I ordered that it cannot be higher than the Votive Church which measures 99 meters. An ambitious architect Friedrich von Schmidt designed the building that was 97.9 m high and then located at the top of the tower a 5.4 m knight sculpture which is called by Viennese The Rathausmann. By the time it was done, the Rathaus was technically higher than the Votivkirche.