Parliament & the Pallas Athena Fountain
Why is it significant?
Face the long double ramp of the Austrian Parliament, with bronze horse tamers wrestling their stallions at its foot, and let your eyes climb to a temple front of white columns. You might think you had been teleported to Athens. That was exactly the idea.
Key Facts
| Place | Parliament & the Pallas Athena Fountain |
|---|---|
| Address | Dr.-Karl-Renner-Ring 3, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.20810, 16.35850 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna's Ringstrasse: The Grand Boulevard That Replaced the City Walls |
| Generated | Generated |
Face the long double ramp of the Austrian Parliament, with bronze horse tamers wrestling their stallions at its foot, and let your eyes climb to a temple front of white columns. You might think you had been teleported to Athens. That was exactly the idea.
The architect, Theophil Hansen, was a Dane who had worked for years in Athens, and he built this house for the Reichsrat, the imperial parliament, between 1874 and 1883. He chose Greek forms on purpose, because Greece meant democracy. It was a bold message in a monarchy where the emperor still appointed the government, and where the chamber had to hold deputies from Bohemia to Galicia speaking many different languages. In 1897, in a bitter fight over language laws, one deputy, Otto Lecher, spoke for some twelve hours through the night to block a vote.
In front stands the Pallas Athena fountain, completed in 1902: the goddess of wisdom in helmet and armour, a small winged Victory in her hand. Below her, reclining figures stand for the great rivers of the old empire, the Danube, the Inn, the Elbe and the Vltava. The Viennese have a dry joke about her... wisdom stays outside, with her back turned to the politicians.
The ramp has seen real history. On 12 November 1918, after the empire collapsed, the republic was proclaimed here before a vast crowd, and shots and panic broke out on the ramp. In March 1933 Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss used a procedural crisis to shut parliament down and rule by decree, and five years later Hitler's Germany swallowed the country. Parliamentary democracy only returned to this building in 1945.
After a long renovation the building reopened in January 2023, with a new glass roof over the main chamber, and visitors can again walk where the deputies argue. Now continue north along the Ring. Across the park on your left a neo-Gothic giant rises above the trees, with a little iron knight standing on top of its tower.