Vienna Ring Road

The road is located on sites where medieval city fortifications once stood, including high walls and the broad open field ramparts (glacis), criss-crossed by paths that lay before them.

In 1850, the suburbs or Vorstädte (today the Districts II to IX) were incorporated into the municipality, which made the city walls an impediment to traffic.

In 1857, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria issued the decree "I have resolved to command" (Es ist Mein Wille at Wikisource) ordering the demolition of the city walls and moats.

On the practical level, Emperor Napoléon III of France's boulevard construction in Paris had already demonstrated how enlarging and widening the size of streets effectively made the erection of revolutionary barricades difficult and thus an easier target for artillery.

Originally, there should have been a parallel wing opposite the Neue Hofburg, which would have been located across the Ringstrasse from the Museum of Natural History.

The Ringstraße was also generously planned with green spaces and trees, the most notable parks being the Stadtpark with the Kursalon, Burggarten, Volksgarten, and Rathauspark, as well as a number of squares such as the Schwarzenbergplatz, Schillerplatz, Maria-Theresien-Platz and Heldenplatz.

They include statues to Goethe, Schiller, Empress Maria Theresia, Prince Eugene of Savoy, Archduke Charles of Austria, the founders of the First Austrian Republic, Athena, Andreas von Liebenberg, Count Radetzky, Georg Coch, and Johann Strauss amongst many.

The famous Hotel Metropole, which was located at the Franz-Joseph-Kai, was completely destroyed and replaced with a monument to the victims of Nazism.

It surrounds the central area of Vienna on all sides, except for the northeast, where its place is taken by the Franz-Josephs-Kai, the street going along the Donaukanal (a branch of the Danube).