Luxushotel Palais Coburg (original) (raw)

The Vienna city defences, which can still be seen today in the route of the Vienna ring road, date back to the 13 th century, and the area they enclose corresponds to the then city and formal seat of the Babenbergs. During the first Turkish siege by Sultan Sulaiman in 1529, the mediaeval circular wall proved to be unsuitable for defending the city, and it was only with difficulty that the city was kept from being taken by the Ottomans. The new defences for Vienna were put in place under the guidance of several fortress master-builders, in the

so-called "Italian manner of fortification", in which projecting bastions were connected to one another by ramparts. The entire construction was surrounded by a city ditch. The construction of the Braunbastei [Brown Bastion], situated between the Dominikanerbastei (Stubentor) and the Wasserkunstbastei, dates back to 1555. Following conversion works in the decades which followed, the city fortifications were put to the test during the second Turkish siege of the city in 1683, when despite numerous breaches of the defences the Ottoman forces were unable to capture Vienna. Following the surrender of Vienna to Napoleon's troops in 1809, the blowing-up of the Burgbastei prefigured the end of the Vienna city fortifications. In 1857, Kaiser Franz Josef I authorised the demolition of the fortifications, which no longer served any useful purpose, in order to create space for the greatly-increased urban population. It is thanks to the fact that in the 1840s the Palais Coburg was built over the Braunbastei that large parts of the Renaissance defences, especially the casemates of the former Braunbastei, have been preserved in a manner unique in Vienna.