Name: Four Powers, One City: Vienna 1945 to 1955
SKU: 290

A famous black-and-white film made Vienna’s ruins look like a city of shadows and crooks. This walk follows the film to its doorways, squares and sewer hatch, and then tells what it left out: ten years in which four armies ran one city. A Soviet soldier on a column that Austria is bound by treaty to keep. Four generals at one table, deadlocked over a paragraph. A black market a short walk from the film’s sewer entrance, and the real trade in penicillin, kept apart from the film’s fiction. An opera house that burned and waited ten years. Four soldiers of four armies in one jeep. People taken by the occupiers and brought home years later, one of them on a stretcher. And a foreign minister whose famous words were said indoors, not where everyone remembers. No film clips, music or quotations; no tickets needed.

The stops

Schwarzenbergplatz: The Soldier and the Generals
Karlsplatz: The Hatch and the Market
Behind the Opera: Requisitioned
Josefsplatz: A Dead Man’s Front Door
Schreyvogelgasse 8: The Doorway
Am Hof: The Kiosk That Never Was
Maria am Gestade: The Newest Old Steps
Hoher Markt: Free, Indoors

Finding the start

Start on the west sidewalk of Schwarzenbergplatz, level with the middle of the Haus der Industrie (Schwarzenbergplatz 4) across the square, with the Soviet war memorial visible down the square to the south. Trams D and 71 stop at Schwarzenbergplatz nearby; the U-Bahn station Karlsplatz (U1, U2, U4) is about 600 meters west.

Terrain and access

About 3.7 kilometers, almost level, on paved sidewalks and, from Josefsplatz on, cobbled squares and lanes. The main route is step-free: the stairs at the Mölker Steig and at Maria am Gestade are optional and never needed. Busy crossings with lights and acoustic signals at Schwarzenbergplatz, Karlsplatz, Friedrichstrasse and the Ring; quiet lanes after the opera. No admissions needed; everything is seen from outside.

Tickets

No admissions needed; everything is seen from outside.

Keep going

Inside the Ring: One Square Mile That Ran an Empire

What you get

An email from [email protected] with a link and an access code.
Use it on your phone or tablet in an up-to-date web browser, no app store needed. There is no account to set up before you start.
Download it on Wi-Fi before you go. After that it works offline: audio, text, map and pictures.
Your booking includes 2 phones, so two of you can follow along, each on your own. Extra phones are $2.95 each, or a group can share one phone on its speaker.
Play, pause and replay every part, skip back and ahead, or change the playback speed. Keep the screen on or tap play at each stop.

How it was made

Every fact in the narration is checked against a cited source, and legends are told as legends. The narration is written from that research. How our tours are made.