Vienna (German: Wien, Austro-Bavarian: Wean) is the capital of the Republic of Austria. It is by far the largest city in Austria (pop. 1. 7m), as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. As the former home of the Habsburg court and its various empires, the city still has the trappings of the imperial capital it once was, and the historic city centre is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The low-lying Danube plain in and around what is now Vienna has had a human population since at least the late Paleolithic: one of the city's most famous artifacts, the 24, 000-year-old Venus of Willendorf, now in Vienna's Natural History Museum, was found nearby. Vienna's own recorded history began with the Romans, who founded it in the 1st Century CE as Vindobona, one of a line of Roman defensive outposts against Germanic tribes. Vindobona's central garrison was on the site of what is now the Hoher Markt (the "High Market" due to its relative height over the Danube), and you can still see the excavations of its foundations there today.
Traditional Vienna is but one of the many façades of this city; the historic center, a UNESCO world heritage site, is sometimes begrudgingly compared to an open-air museum. But Vienna is also a dynamic young city, famous for its (electronic) music scene with independent labels, cult-status underground record stores, a vibrant Monday through Sunday club scene, multitudes of street performers, and a government that seems overly obsessed with complicated paperwork. However, people are willing to go out of their way or bend the rules a little if they feel they can do someone a favor.
Vienna (Wien in tedesco, pronunciato e in dialetto bavarese anche, Bécs in ungherese) è la capitale federale e allo stesso tempo uno stato federato dell'Austria, completamente circondato dalla Bassa Austria.
Vienna è sede di importanti organizzazioni internazionali tra le quali: OPEC, AIEA e ONU. Il centro storico della città è stato dichiarato patrimonio dell'umanità dall'UNESCO.
Vienna è nota anche come la città dei musicisti per avere ospitato molti tra i maggiori compositori del XVIII e del XIX secolo: Antonio Vivaldi, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Joseph Haydn, Antonio Salieri, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, gli Strauss, Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schönberg e altri ancora.
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