As a follow up to my article yesterday on ‘Where is Austria located?‘, today we have ‘Where is Vienna located?‘, because when it comes to finding Vienna on a map, I would guess many people cannot even find the country it sits in.
And no, I am not pointing fingers as, before I moved to Vienna, I had no idea where Austria’s capital city was either.
When my Austrian friends question my ignorance, I often answer with this — “Austria isn’t a country suffering from a civil war, race riots, extreme poverty or any of the tens of thousands of other terrible problems so many countries still experience. That means, in the various countries I have lived in, Vienna rarely, if ever, popped up on the news. So why would I know where Vienna was, when I had never been here? I can find Bangkok with extreme accuracy, however”. 🙂
Of course, since moving to Vienna in 2016, I can not only find Austria on a map, I am now a pro at pinpointing Vienna too.
So, for all of you now here who are as ignorant as I used to be when it comes to where Vienna is located, here’s what you might want to know.
Where is Vienna located?
Austria’s capital city, Vienna, is located in the north-east of the country in what is known as the ‘Vienna Basin’ — a ‘basin’ of land where sediments have settled over millions of years and become compacted. Thus, creating an area perfect for a city like Vienna.
The city itself sits between the Alps, the Carpathian Mountains and the Pannonian Plain.
Yes, while in most areas of the city Vienna is relatively flat, outside the city proper it tends to be quite hilly, to say the least.
As for location in proximity to other cities in the region, Vienna is less than an hour’s drive from the Slovakian capital of Bratislava (80 kilometers), and around three hours 15 minutes from the Czech Republic’s capital city Prague.
Having spent 14 years living in Bangkok, Thailand, Vienna seems like a very small, extremely compact, capital city to me. In reality, it is 414.65 square kilometers, or about 160.1 square miles.
As capital cities go, though, it is an easy city to walk around, so it is simple to get to many key places on foot. Vienna also has one of the world’s best public transportation systems. A tram, train and bus system that is efficient, clean, safe and very, very affordable.
Around 2 million people live in Vienna, which, amazing to most, is one third of Austria’s entire population.
Yes, population-wise, Austria is an extremely small country.
Capital city-wise, however, Vienna actually has quite a large population, ranking at around #51 out of a total of 240 capital cities.
So where is Vienna located?
Now you know, eh?