"SEE VIENNA AND DIE."

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 539, 5 February 1913, Page 2

"SEE VIENNA AND DIE."

The Austrian capital, Vienna, it the opinion of a correspondent whc is an extensive traveller, really furnishes a remarkable example of the city beautiful as an investment. The great ambition of the Viennese is tc make their city the loveliest ir Europe. In the first place Vienna bends all its municipal energies tc keeping its air clean, and this smutfree atmosphere has permitted the erection of numerous statues and monumental works in marble, and the decoration of new buildings in delicate colours that in many other cities would soon disappear under 'a crust of soot. These monuments, as well as aesthetic developments of all kinds, have increased enormously since Dr. Lueger took up the office of Burgomaster about a dozen years ago. There is a saying in Berlin that the German Empress cannot see the bald pate of one of its citizens without wishing to utilise it as the site of a new church. In Vienna every unoccupied corner tempts its enterprising Burgomaster to fill it with a statue, a garden, or a flower bed. He has even hit upon the ingenious idtea of hanging circular flower pots round the tall electric lamps, by means of which he has fulfilled the prophecy of the late Crown Prince Rudolph that Vienna would one day become a city of light. Such ie his love of colour that he has provided luminous fountain* at night for the pleasure of the inhabitants, who collect to see them, as they do to hear the excellent popular music discoursed at the regular Sunday fair in the Prater.