Brigittenau 2025

Brigittenau is an insider district, not so far from the centre, but with its own, strong identity. We will explore this less-visited part of town on a 5 hour walk, with lunch in the middle. It forms part of an island, with Leopoldstadt, which is something unusual in a capital city, and the river Danube has dominated its history. This is a storytelling walk, where we hope to build a sense of belonging, and place, but also give you ideas which you can think about later.

Among the sites we will explore are the edge of Augarten, Radio Orange, Donaukanal party scene, a famous eating establishment, Hannover street market, the district administration building (where your guide Eugene got married in a shotgun wedding!), another bureaucratic building which issues visas for foreigners to live in Vienna and has a bad reputation, Adolf Hitler’s former residence in Meldemannstrasse, a big new smart city development on the brownfield site of former railway station Nordwestbahnhof,Street Art, and an unusual living building, Otto Wagner’s legendary lions which protect the city from torrents of water, find out who Brigitte was (a Swedish woman who gave her name to the district), and also an important writer in Austria who told stories of naughty girls, see some of Vienna’s famous social housing, visit the most famous thing in this district, the Millennium Shopping Centre, with its fine views of Danube, hotels, play areas and cinemas. One mystery we will solve is why so many local streets are named after German places (Dresdnerstrasse, Hannovergasse, Donaueschenfeldgasse, Leipziger Str., Sachsenplatz).