AustriaÖsterreich

The Habsburgs, a family from what is now Switzerland, took control of the duchy of Austria in 1278 and held it until 1918. Through marriages more than wars they gathered Spain, the Netherlands, Bohemia, Hungary and parts of Italy; for most of the time from 1438 to 1806 a Habsburg was also Holy Roman Emperor. Vienna grew from a Danube fortress town into the capital of a multi-national empire.

Vienna survived two Ottoman sieges, in 1529 and 1683. The second, broken by a relief army under the Polish king Jan Sobieski, opened a century of Baroque building: Schönbrunn Palace, the Belvedere, the Karlskirche, and the abbeys at Melk and elsewhere. Maria Theresa (reigned 1740–1780) modernised administration and schools; her son Joseph II pushed reforms so fast that many were reversed.

After Napoleon ended the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Franz I ruled as Emperor of Austria, and the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) redrew Europe in the city's palaces. Franz Joseph reigned for 68 years (1848–1916). In 1857 he ordered the old city walls pulled down and replaced by the Ringstrasse, a boulevard lined with the Opera, Parliament, City Hall, the museums and the university. In 1867 the empire became the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.

The assassination of the heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo in 1914 started the First World War. Defeat in 1918 broke the empire into successor states: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia and a rump Austria of about 6.5 million people. The Habsburgs were exiled, and their titles abolished.

Vienna's claim as a capital of music rests on a remarkable concentration of composers who worked there: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in the Classical era, Schubert, then Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and the waltz dynasty of Johann Strauss father and son. Salzburg, an independent prince-archbishopric until 1803, gave the world Mozart and today runs one of the world's leading summer festivals.

Around 1900 the city became a laboratory of modern ideas. Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis in the 9th district; Gustav Klimt and the Secession artists broke with academic painting; Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos argued over ornament in architecture; Arnold Schoenberg moved music beyond traditional tonality; and philosophers of the Vienna Circle and Ludwig Wittgenstein reshaped logic. Much of this was the work of a Jewish middle class that would be driven out or murdered within a generation.

Music is still ordinary life. The State Opera plays most nights of the season, standing tickets make it affordable, and the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert is broadcast worldwide. The ball season in January and February, with the Opera Ball as its peak, keeps dance traditions alive; many Viennese learn to waltz at school.

The First Republic (1918–1938) was poor and divided between 'Red Vienna', whose Social Democratic city government built vast municipal housing blocks, and a conservative Catholic countryside. A short civil war in 1934 ended in an authoritarian 'Austrofascist' regime. In March 1938 German troops crossed the border and Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany in the Anschluss, welcomed by large crowds in Vienna.

About 65,000 Austrian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and most of the rest were forced into exile. Mauthausen, near Linz, was one of the harshest concentration camps. For decades after 1945 Austria described itself as Hitler's 'first victim', a story that was only publicly questioned after the Waldheim affair of 1986, when a former UN Secretary-General elected president was found to have hidden his wartime service.

Allied troops occupied Austria from 1945 until the State Treaty of 1955, when the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw in return for permanent neutrality. The Second Republic built a consensus model of cooperation between parties, unions and employers, and prospered. Vienna became a seat of the United Nations, OPEC and the OSCE, trading on its position between East and West during the Cold War.

Nearly two-thirds of Austria is mountainous. The main Alpine chains run east–west, with the Hohe Tauern and the Grossglockner (3,798 m) at the centre, and the country's life is organised along valleys: the Inn through Tyrol, the Salzach through Salzburg, the Enns and the Mur further east. Railways and roads follow these valleys, which is why Austrian trips work best as east–west lines.

Mountain farming shaped the landscape of meadows, hay barns and high summer pastures (Almen), where cattle spend July and August before returning in decorated processions in September. Tourism arrived with the railways in the 19th century and exploded with skiing after 1945. The Arlberg region around St Anton is often called the cradle of modern Alpine skiing, and winter tourism now supports whole valleys.

Salt made the region rich long before tourism. Hallstatt gave its name to an Iron Age culture because of prehistoric salt mines, and 'Salzburg' literally means salt castle. Climate change is the new pressure: glaciers are retreating fast, snow lines are rising, and resorts increasingly depend on artificial snow — debates you will hear in every ski town.

The Viennese coffee house is on UNESCO's list of intangible heritage, and for good reason: it is a public living room where a single coffee buys the right to sit for hours with newspapers on wooden holders. The ritual — marble tables, waiters in black, a glass of water with every cup, a long menu of coffee styles from Melange to Einspänner — dates to the late 17th century.

Wine is the other daily drink. Vienna is one of the few capitals with vineyards inside its city limits, and the Heuriger — a tavern serving the producer's own young wine with a cold buffet — is a summer institution on the city's edges and in Lower Austria, Burgenland and Styria. Grüner Veltliner is the signature white grape; Blaufränkisch and Zweigelt are the main reds.

Austrian cooking combines the court kitchen of Vienna with the cooking of the old empire: goulash from Hungary, dumplings and pastries from Bohemia, the breaded cutlet that became the Wiener Schnitzel. In the Alps, hut food is bacon, cheese and dumplings. The pastry tradition — strudel, Sachertorte, Kaiserschmarrn — is a matter of national pride, and the Sachertorte even had its own court case over who owned the name.

Austria is one of Europe's richest countries per head, with a strong manufacturing base, a large tourism sector and a generous welfare state. Vienna regularly tops global liveability rankings, helped by the fact that roughly half its residents live in subsidised municipal or cooperative housing, and by cheap annual transport passes.

Politics has swung between the centre-right People's Party, the Social Democrats and the far-right Freedom Party, which came first in the 2024 election. After long talks, a three-party coalition without the Freedom Party took office in 2025 under Chancellor Christian Stocker. Migration, energy prices and relations with neighbours shape debates; neutrality keeps Austria out of NATO even as it remains in the EU.

For visitors, Austria is safe, clean and orderly. The things to notice are its formality — titles, greetings, Sunday closures — and its strong regional identities: a Tyrolean and a Viennese will both remind you that they are different. Winter tourism and the Alpine environment are the long-term questions, as glaciers retreat and ski seasons shorten.