AustriaAustria is a diverse country, rich in culture, with spectacular scenery and an enormous variety of holidays to offer throughout the winter and summer seasons. Our fabulous holidays take in every aspect of Austria and its neighbours, whether it's a break to the magical cities of Vienna, Salzburg or Innsbruck, a weekend shopping in Bratislava or eating, drinking and dancing till the midnight hours in Prague, we're sure you will enjoy your visit. One of the great capitals of Europe, Vienna was for centuries home to the Habsburg rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Most people visit Vienna with a vivid image of the city in their minds: a monumental vision of Habsburg palaces, trotting white horses, old ladies in fur coats and mountains of fat cream cakes. And they're unlikely to be disappointed, for the city positively feeds off imperial nostalgia – High Baroque churches and aristocratic mansions pepper the Innere Stadt, monumental projects from the late nineteenth century line the Ringstrasse, and postcards of the Emperor Franz-Josef and his beautiful wife Elisabeth still sell by the sackful. Just as compelling as the old Habsburg stand-bys are the wonderful Jugendstil and early Modernist buildings, products of the era of Freud, Klimt, Schiele, Mahler and Schönberg, when the city's famous coffeehouses were filled with intellectuals from every corner of the empire. Without doubt, this was Vienna's golden age, after which all has been decline: with the end of the empire in 1918, the city was reduced from a metropolis of over two million, capital of a vast empire of fifty million, to one of barely more than 1.5 million and federal capital of a small country of just eight million. |
|
