Famous people who grew up or lived in and around Vienna

Emperor Franz Joseph I1830–1916

📍 Schönbrunner Schlossstraße 47, 1130 Vienna, Austria

I was born in the Blue Chinese Salon on the first floor and died in my study sixty-eight years later. Schönbrunn was never simply a palace to me — it was the only home I truly knew. I…

Empress Elisabeth of Austria1854–1898

📍 Hofburg, Michaelerkuppel, 1010 Vienna, Austria

I was born on Christmas Eve 1837 in Munich, but my true home as a girl was Possenhofen Castle on the shore of Lake Starnberg, where my father, Duke Max, let us children run free: riding…

Fanny Elssler1810–1830

📍 Gumpendorf, Vienna, Austria

I was born Franziska Elssler in June 1810 in Gumpendorf, then a village of craftsmen, gardens and small houses just outside the walls of Vienna. My father, Johann Florian Elssler, had been…

Franz Schubert1797–1828

📍 Nußdorfer Straße 54, 1090 Vienna, Austria

I was born Franz Peter Schubert on the 31st of January 1797 in the Himmelpfortgrund suburb of Vienna, the twelfth child of a schoolmaster. The house on the Nussdorfer Strasse — modest…

Gustav Klimt1862–1918

📍 Baumgarten, 1140 Vienna, Austria

I was born Gustav Klimt on the 14th of July 1862 in Baumgarten, a suburb of Vienna, the son of Ernst Klimt, a gold engraver. My father's craft — the precise working of precious metal …

Hedy Lamarr1914–1937

📍 12 Peter-Jordan-Straße, Vienna 1190, Austria

I was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna in 1914, the only child of Emil Kiesler, a bank director, and Gertrude Lichtwitz, a pianist. Vienna of the early twentieth century was one of…

Lise Meitner1878–1907

📍 27 Kaiser-Josef-Straße, Leopoldstadt, Vienna 1020, Austria

I was born Elise Meitner in Vienna in 1878, the third of eight children of a Jewish family, and Vienna — the Vienna of fin-de-siècle intellectual brilliance — was where I grew up and where…

Ludwig van Beethoven1802

📍 Probusgasse 6, 1190 Vienna (Heiligenstadt), Austria

I spent the summer of 1802 in a small house in Heiligenstadt, a village on the outskirts of Vienna, sent there by my doctor to rest my failing hearing in the quiet of the countryside…

Niki Lauda1949–1968

📍 Vienna, Austria

I was born in Vienna in February 1949 into a wealthy, old Viennese family of industrialists. My grandfather, Hans Lauda, had built a paper-manufacturing empire and was a powerful figure in…

Sigmund Freud1891–1938

📍 Berggasse 19, 1090 Vienna, Austria

I lived and practised at Berggasse 19 for forty-seven years. Every Wednesday evening my colleagues gathered in my waiting room — from which the entire psychoanalytic movement grew. On the…

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart1781–1791

📍 Domgasse 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria (Figarohaus)

I arrived in Vienna at the age of sixteen after years of touring Europe as a child prodigy, and the city became my home and the centre of my creative life. I lived in a series of apartments…