Heldenplatz and the Neue Burg
Why is it significant?
Walk out into the middle of this enormous square and let it make you feel small, which is exactly what it was built to do. Behind you the Neue Burg spreads its curved colonnade, and on the lawns two bronze generals rear up on their horses, facing each other across the grass.
Key Facts
| Place | Heldenplatz and the Neue Burg |
|---|---|
| Address | Heldenplatz, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.20620, 16.36370 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna's Imperial Heart: The Hofburg, the Habsburg Crypt and Six Centuries of Empire |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk out into the middle of this enormous square and let it make you feel small, which is exactly what it was built to do. Behind you the Neue Burg spreads its curved colonnade, and on the lawns two bronze generals rear up on their horses, facing each other across the grass.
The rider on the left as you face the Neue Burg is Archduke Charles, who defeated Napoleon at Aspern in 1809. Look at his horse: it balances on its two hind legs alone, with no tail or extra support touching the plinth. The sculptor Anton Dominik Fernkorn pulled off that feat in 1860. The other horseman is Prince Eugene of Savoy, the general who helped turn back the Ottomans after 1683.
The Neue Burg itself is a half-finished dream. It was meant to be one of two matching wings embracing the square, part of a gigantic Imperial Forum reaching across the Ring to the museums. Building began in 1881 and dragged on until 1913. Then the war came, the empire collapsed, and the twin wing was never built. So the square is shaped like a sentence nobody finished.
On the 15th of March 1938, three days after German troops crossed the border, Adolf Hitler stood on the balcony of the Neue Burg and announced the entry of his homeland into the German Reich. The square below was packed with a cheering crowd. Within days, Jewish Viennese were being humiliated in the streets, and in the years that followed the deportations began. For decades afterwards Austria described itself mainly as Hitler's first victim; only from the late 1980s did the country openly face how many of its people had cheered.
The square has answered that balcony since. In January 1993 it filled again, this time with a sea of candles held by a huge crowd protesting against hatred of foreigners. The same stones, a different city. Now cross the square towards the trees of the Volksgarten, and look for its little Greek temple.