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Vienna
Vienna (in German Wien) is the capital of Austria and has about 1.6 million inhabitants. Famous as a city of classical music, it is also home to the United Nations Office at Vienna.
Vienna's modern underground network actually goes back to the 19th century, when a system of urban steam railway lines was built to connect the various mainline railways serving the once large Austro-Hungarian Empire. Three Stadtbahn lines opened in stages between 1898 and 1901, with stations and viaducts designed by Otto Wagner, the outstanding art-nouveau (Jugendstil) architect. Two of these lines were later upgraded to become today's U4 and the central section of U6, and the third, a suburban line, was converted into Schnellbahn in the 1980's (S45). The first two lines were electrified in 1925 and operated as a rapid tramway on independent right-of-way, either elevated along the Gürtel (a kind of ring road > now U6) or in an open tunnel along the Danube Canal and the River Wien (> now U4).
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