Augarten, Vienna

Augarten is a spacious public park whose grounds preserve Vienna’s oldest Baroque garden. It covers 52.2 hectares in Leopoldstadt and combines formal flower beds with long, shaded avenues of mature trees. The layout still follows plans created in 1712 by garden designer Jean Trehet, whose work also shaped the gardens at Schönbrunn and the Belvedere.

The park opened to the public on 1 May 1775, when Joseph II had nightingales released here and prohibited their hunting. The main entrance still carries the inscription dedicating this place to everyone’s enjoyment. Look toward the tall wartime towers within the grounds: they are surviving anti-aircraft structures, built as part of Vienna’s Second World War defences.

Their presence gives this carefully arranged garden an abrupt, monumental contrast. The Augarten Palace houses the Vienna Boys’ Choir, while the historic palace complex also contains the Augarten porcelain factory. Music belongs to the park’s story as well: Mozart performed morning concerts here, and Beethoven and Schubert also had works presented in the garden hall. Augarten is therefore both a cultivated historic landscape and a place marked by music, porcelain, and the physical remains of war.