The Vienna Ring Boulevard is celebrating its 150th anniversary

Vienna - It is five kilometers of beauty adorning the center of Vienna like a rare necklace. Ringstrasse, one of the most famous boulevards in Europe, is celebrating its 150th anniversary. The Austrian capital is commemorating this jubilee with several exhibitions that show how this wide avenue has marked the city's history, both positively and negatively. This was reported by the AFP agency.
    Before Ringstrasse became one of the main tourist attractions of the metropolis, it was envisioned by the then Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I. In 1857, he declared that his capital needed a transformation reflecting its wealth and splendor. The massive walls surrounding the city, which had twice deterred the Turks but not Napoleon, were torn down.
    Imperial Vienna was inspired by the contemporary project of the French architect Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, whose name is associated with the extensive renovation of Paris, and the transformation of Munich carried out by Ludwig I of Bavaria.
    Expenses were not limited, and the best architects of the time, such as Gottfried Semper, Theophil Hansen, and Heinrich von Ferstel, were involved. They were given free rein. A neo-Gothic city hall, a neo-Renaissance university, a neo-Romantic opera house, and a neoclassical parliament were created.
    In addition, there is the impressive Burgtheater, the twin buildings of the Natural History Museum and the Museum of Art History, the expansion of the imperial palace Hofburg, and the Ministry of War. All these diverse buildings create a unique monumental atmosphere.
    Ringstrasse, which can be best seen from the trams passing through it, "is a kind of museum of architecture," says historian Ranald Franz from the Museum of Applied Arts. "It had to show the world that Vienna is an international metropolis," he adds.
    And Ringstrasse truly was the main scene of Vienna's golden times until 1900. Its legendary cafés attracted the intellectual elite, such as composer Gustav Mahler, father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, painter Gustav Klimt, and many others.
    Among the public buildings rise opulent palaces built for the new class that emerged due to the rapid industrialization of the empire. Many of them were Jews, such as the banking family Ephrussi, in whose former palace a bank is located today.
    But as Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz, the curator of the upcoming exhibition called Ring, Jewish Boulevard, organized by the Vienna Jewish Museum, explains, this wealth was only a facade. "Alongside the luxurious Ring, the masses had to fight for survival, both Jews and others," she reminds us.
    Most of the bricks used for the stuccoed buildings on Ringstrasse were produced in large factories where workers, often Czechs, worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week for a miserable wage. Their appalling living conditions and disillusionment with the industrial revolution fueled anti-Semitism, cited Kohlbauer-Fritz in the AFP report.
    Ringstrasse was symbolically chosen by Adolf Hitler to celebrate the annexation of his homeland to Nazi Germany in 1938. The dictator waved to the crowds from the balcony of the Hofburg. A few years later, he wrote about the awe that overtook him when he saw the avenue in 1906, mentioning a "scene from the fairy tales of One Thousand and One Nights." The future perpetrator of the Jewish genocide often painted the buildings on the boulevard to make a living after failing the entrance exams to the Academy of Fine Arts twice.