Vienna: An Introduction
“If I speak of Vienna it must be in the past tense, as a man speaks of a woman he has loved and who is dead,” said Erich von Stroheim (1885 – 1957) of the capital city of Austria. The Austrian actor and filmmaker of the silent movie era was quite right about Vienna being a city of the past. And not just a city of one past, but of many pasts. Vienna is notable for its layers of history, built one on top of the other, the oldest, Roman layers reaching as far down as nine meters below the ground level of today’s sidewalks.