© romanple / stock.adobe.com
Municipal housing was invented in Vienna in the 1920s. The oldest of these superblocks are located on the Margaretengürtel, which impress not only as a complex but also with their beautiful details.
Guide
Katrin Kadletz
Katrin Kadletz / Margareten- Superblocks
A fascinating part of Vienna.
A girls’ park, murals from the Calle Libre Festival 2019.
Then, the Viennese housing miracle: Vienna becomes the world’s first social democratic metropolis in 1922. Many unemployed people in Vienna in the interwar period, a huge housing program is launched, the first large municipal housing estates are built, mighty ‘castles of the proletariat’: 100s of apartments, many staircases, defiant on the outside, green, spacious and practical on the inside. With janitor’s apartment, kindergarten, pediatrician, dry cleaner, travel agency, bicycle cellar, garbage room, ironing room, swimming pool, studio … with high quality, beautifully designed, beautiful details in window frames, grilles, lamps – and, the ‘art on the building’.
And then we walk over to Haydn’s first burial site and I tell you about the mystery surrounding his skull; on to the 48ers with their green façade, past an exemplary renovated Tröpferlbad and the Neunerhaus and then back to our starting point, the Bruno-Keisky-Park on the U4. 4 km”