If you are enjoy classical music, you've got to visit Vienna. The cultural heritage of music is unrivalled, with great composers like Strauss, Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn and the fantastic Mozart ( when he moved temporarily from Salzburg ) all having lived and performed their music in Vienna. Mind you, man ( and woman ) cannot live by music alone and you will need to sit with your cream cakes and coffee and listen, if you're lucky, to the angelic music of the Vienna Boys choir. Vienna is Austria's biggest city situated on the very east of Austria near to Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. It's a major centre of business and cultural life. Vienna is sometimes a number one destination for visitors together with the Austrian Alps, though they'd also wish to go further out after visiting Vienna and see Graz, Linz or Innsbruck for a change. Vienna was originally a Celtic settlement, settled in 500BC on the banks of the Danube, and then was a crucial Roman base, which they called Vindobona. With its base on the Danube it became a key strategic centre for the Hapsburg ( or Habsburg ) Empire and you can see the influence of the great empire with its great palaces and mansions. During that time it was called The Imperial town, and was the time of its greatest architectural development. At the end of the 19th century the golden period declines and the coffee houses of Vienna house the radical thinkers like Freud, Klimt and Mahler. Vienna survived the wars to become a fantastic mix of the romantic of the Italian influences with the construction of the Germans. As a beautiful place you have to get a holiday and a
Austria Hotel. There's a pedestrianised city centre with many of the traveller attractions around the old district that used to be within city walls, but now replaced by the ring road, the Ringstrasse. On the edges are the Prater entertainment Park and the Schonbrunn summer palace. And then there are the many sights, the museums, the food have I mentioned the cream cakes? The food is a touch stodgy and fairly often beige, but toothsome. Expect to be corpulent when you come back.