The history of Vienna has been long and varied, beginning with a Roman military camp now covered by Vienna’s city centre. Even today, the streets of the First District show where the encampment placed its walls and moats. Vienna grew from the Roman settlement known as "Vindobona" to be an important trading site in the 11^th Century. It became the capital of the Babenberg dynasty and subsequently, with Rudolf I, capital of the Austrian Habsburgs, under whom it became one of Europe’s cultural hubs.

Vienna is all that and so much more. Vienna is probably one of the most, if not the most culturally diverse city in the world. To view its development with the knowledge gained from proven sources, it was always an up and down of peoples, a mixing, combining and pairing of diverse influences. Driven by undeniable powers – floods, hunger, droughts - a myriad of tribes drifted through that part of Europe, which later was to become Austria. Evolving from nomadic tents, lake-dwellings and straw huts, slowly getting accustomed to Celtic walls, to Roman stone structures and the wooden fortifications of the Huns, a City came into being that still today encompasses characteristics from all of those past influences.

To review the entire history of Vienna would take too long, let it suffice to say that such a varied history, starting with prehistoric history to modern times, and including the Crusades (the capture of Richard the Lionheart), the Turkish sieges (resulting in the creation of one of Vienna’s trademarks, the "Wiener Kaffeehaus" and the "Kipferl"), to the Napoleonic Wars; the amalgamation of Nations under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, thus making it into a melting pot of diversified cultures and life styles; the rise to architectural and cultural supremacy with the Baroque age and the various Emperors and Empresses fostering and nurturing all forms of art and science, helped shape this city into the cosmopolitan world capital it is today, always a haven and home of choice for composers, writers and great minds. Forever open and adaptable to new introductions of the present and future, the Viennese remain true World Citizens.