vienna

Vienna is the national capital, largest city, and one of nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria’s most populous city, with about 1.9 million inhabitants (2.6 million within the metropolitan area, nearly one third of the country’s population), and its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 6th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was the largest German-speaking city in the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, the city had 2 million inhabitants. Today, it is the second-largest Germanspeaking city after Berlin. Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations, OPEC, and the OSCE. The city is located in the eastern part of Austria and is close to the borders of Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region. Along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In July 2017 it was moved to the list of World Heritage in Danger. Additionally to being known as the „City of Music” due to its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be the „City of Dreams”, because of it being home to the world’s first psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Vienna’s ancestral roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city.

Vienna is the seat of the Metropolitan Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna, in which is also vested the exempt Ordinariate for Byzantine-rite Catholics in Austria; its current Archbishop is Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.

The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian version of the city’s name or the French Vienne.

Vienna has an oceanic climate and features, according to the Köppen classification, a Cfb (oceanic) climate.