For centuries the heart of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the stately city on the Danube, has been defined by vast palaces and imperial grandeur. But behind the Baroque opulence, Vienna is also a place of genteel coffee house culture, epicurean tradition, and a heritage of both delicate and daring music, art, and design, from Johann Strauss to Egon Schiele.
Taschen’s latest book is a treasure trove of photography from the last 175 years, following the evolution of Vienna from imperial capital to modern metropolis.
Like a visual walk through time and cityscape, hundreds of pictures trace the developments in Vienna’s built environment and the cultural and historical trends they reflect, whether the urban Gesamtkunstwerk of the 19th-century Ringstrasse or the experiments of Red Vienna in the 1920s, when the city had a social democrat government for the first time.
Discover not only the great landmarks and lesser-known corners of the country, but also the ubiquity and the tumult of its history. The cultural blossoming of the fin de siecle, when radical innovators such as Gustav Klimt, Adolf Loos, and Sigmund Freud turned Vienna into a “laboratory of modernity”; the clashes of 1934; the ascent of Nazi dictatorship; and the horrors writ by the Holocaust in what was once one of the most populous and multi-ethnic cities on earth.
More recently, fascinating postwar photographs explore the Vienna found in the 1959 film noir The Third Man, when the city became a place of ruins and a hub for spies.
Indeed, this colourful book celebrates the emergence of today’s metropolis – one of the most attractive cities in Europe, in which rich history once again coexists with international flair and vibrant contemporary culture.
You can purchase ‘Vienna. Portrait of a City’ here
