Founded around 500 BC, Vienna was originally a Celtic settlement.In 15 BC, Vienna became a Roman frontier city ("Vindobona") guarding the Roman Empire against Germanic tribes to the north. During the Middle Ages, Vienna was home of the Babenberg Dynasty and in 1440 became residence city of the Habsburg Dynasties from where Vienna eventually grew to become the secret capital of the Holy Roman Empire and a cultural centre for arts and science, music and fine cuisine. The Ottoman-Turkish Islamic invasions of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries were stopped twice just outside Vienna. See the Siege of Vienna (1529) and the Battle of Vienna (1683).

In 1805, Vienna became capital of the Austrian Empire - the later Austro-Hungarian Empire, both played a major role in European and World politics. In 1918, after World War I, Vienna became capital of the First Austrian Republic. After the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938 (see Anschluss) Vienna lost its status as a capital to Berlin. A preliminary Austrian government was reinstated on April 27, 1945, with Vienna as capital once more. After 1945, Vienna and neutral Austria were a hotbed for international espionage between the Western and Eastern blocs (Cold War). Since the end of the Cold War, the city of Vienna is actively rebuilding ties with its eastern neighbours.

Most visitors connect Vienna with a romantic place full of Habsburg nostalgia and musical resonances.

The first settlement of any substance was Roman. The city was called Vindobona, but was in fact never more than a garrison town. It was only with the rise of the Babenberg clan in the tenth century that Vienna became an important city. In the 1278 the city fell to Rudolf of Habsburg, but had to compete for centuries with Prague, Linz and Graz as the imperial residence on account of its vulnerability to attack from the Turks, who first laid siege to it in 1529. It was only with the removal of the Turkish threat in 1683 that the court based itself here permanently. The great aristocratic families, grown fat on the profits of the Turkish wars, flooded in to build palaces and summer residences in a frenzy of construction that gave Vienna its Baroque character.

Imperial Vienna was never a wholly German city: as the capital of a cosmopolitan empire, it attracted great minds from all over central and eastern Europe. By the end of the Habsburg era it had become a breeding ground for the ideological movements of the age: nationalism, socialism, zionism and anti-semitism, all flourished here. This turbulence was reflected in the cultural sphere, and the ghosts of Freud, Klimt, Schiele, Mahler and Schönberg are nowadays bigger tourist draws than the old stand-bys like the Lippizaner horses or the Vienna Boy's Choir.