Morzinplatz & Franz-Josefs-Kai
Why is it significant?
The Ring does not close in a circle; it ends at the water. In front of you runs the Danube Canal, a green-grey arm of the river, and along it the Franz-Josefs-Kai, the quay road that completes the loop.
Key Facts
| Place | Morzinplatz & Franz-Josefs-Kai |
|---|---|
| Address | Morzinplatz, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.21320, 16.37380 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna's Ringstrasse: The Grand Boulevard That Replaced the City Walls |
| Generated | Generated |
The Ring does not close in a circle; it ends at the water. In front of you runs the Danube Canal, a green-grey arm of the river, and along it the Franz-Josefs-Kai, the quay road that completes the loop. In the small park on Morzinplatz stands a dark block of granite with a bronze figure and the words Niemals vergessen... never forget.
The quay was laid out in the same years as the Ring, and the canal front became a fashionable address. In 1873, for the World Exhibition, the Hotel Metropole opened on this square, one of the grandest hotels in Vienna, built for the crowds of visitors the exhibition was supposed to bring. Writers and actors stayed there; for decades it was simply part of the elegant city.
In March 1938, days after the Anschluss, the Gestapo took over the Metropole as its Vienna headquarters. Thousands of people were interrogated and tortured in its rooms: Jews, Social Democrats, Communists, monarchists, Catholic conservatives, anyone who stood in the way. On 1 April 1938 the first transport of Austrian prisoners left Vienna for the Dachau concentration camp; among them was Leopold Figl, who would become chancellor of Austria in 1945. In the last days of the war the hotel burned out, and its ruins were cleared.
The memorial was set up in the 1980s, and its stone came from the granite quarry of the Mauthausen concentration camp, where prisoners were worked to death hauling blocks up the so-called Stairs of Death. On the site of the hotel stands a plain post-war block named the Leopold-Figl-Hof, with a small memorial room inside.
It is the necessary shadow of this walk: the grand boulevard of liberal Vienna, with its banks, theatres and university, led straight into this. Now follow the quay downstream, past Schwedenplatz, and turn right towards the Stubenring, to the last building of the walk, the one that said goodbye to the whole Ringstrasse style.