Schwarzenbergplatz: The Fountain and the Soldier
Why is it significant?
Listen first, then look. The roar comes from the Hochstrahlbrunnen, the high jet fountain, throwing water metres into the air in a wide stone basin. Behind it, on a tall column framed by a curved colonnade, a giant soldier in a golden helmet holds up a flag.
Key Facts
| Place | Schwarzenbergplatz: The Fountain and the Soldier |
|---|---|
| Address | Schwarzenbergplatz, 1030 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.19820, 16.37620 |
| Part of Walk | Gold, Rebels and The Kiss: Vienna from the Secession to the Belvedere |
| Generated | Generated |
Listen first, then look. The roar comes from the Hochstrahlbrunnen, the high jet fountain, throwing water metres into the air in a wide stone basin. Behind it, on a tall column framed by a curved colonnade, a giant soldier in a golden helmet holds up a flag. Two very different stories share this square.
The fountain first. For most of its history Vienna drank bad water, from wells and the river, and cholera came back again and again. Then, in 1873, the city opened its first mountain spring pipeline, carrying water by gravity from the springs of the Rax and Schneeberg mountains more than ninety kilometres away. No pumps, just a gentle slope all the way. This fountain was switched on the same year to celebrate it. To this day, Vienna's tap water comes from the Alps, and the Viennese are very proud of it.
Locals like to say that the fountain is also a calendar, with its jets standing for the days, the hours and the months... count them if you have the patience. On summer nights it is lit in changing colours, and it is one of the coolest places in the city to sit.
Now the soldier. This is the memorial to the Red Army, unveiled in August 1945, only four months after Soviet troops took Vienna in heavy fighting in which many thousands of their soldiers died. The Russian inscription honours those who fell for the liberation of Europe from fascism. For Vienna, 1945 meant two things at once: the end of seven years of Nazi rule, and for many civilians, weeks of violence, hunger and fear. The square was even renamed Stalinplatz for ten years. Under the State Treaty of 1955, Austria promised to protect Soviet war memorials, and it still does.
So here, side by side, stand a monument to clean water and a monument to a war, and the Viennese live with both. Now walk a few steps south, along the right side of the colonnade, to the grand gate of a Baroque palace.