Modern Austria is a small country with a large history. The present Republic long formed the hub of a far-flung monarchy ruled by the house of Habsburg. The Habsburgs, whose possessions stretched as far east as thr Ukraine and as far south as Dubrovnik on the Adriatic, also exercised until Napoleonic times a loose sovereignty over the whole of Germany. Their empire enjoyed its apogee in the 17th and 18^th centuries and the predominantly Baroque face of Austria bears witness to that expansive age. Later, the long reign of Franz Joseph II (1848-1916) brought a renewed cultural flowering; but by then, social and national antagonisms were undermining the fabric of Habsburg rule, which collapsed almost overnight in 1918.

Vienna and Salzburg represent the temporal and spiritual poles of the Austrian heritage. Vienna boasts all the trappings of an imperial capital. Its Hofburg, the seat of government, grew with the successive accretions of Habsburg power, and exhibits important architecture from each of the last six centuries. Its museums contain famous collections of art and archaeology. Its palaces reflect the wealth and taste of the dynasts and their attendant noble elite.  Most date from the years around 1700 and are the creation of two outstanding architects: Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, designer of the magnificent Court Library and the Church of St. Charles Borromeo; and Lucas von Hildebrandt, whose crowning achievement is the Belvedere; the twin palaces commissioned by Marlborough’s colleague-in-arms, Prince Eugene. Vienna’s public buildings display the grandeur and confidence of the 19^th century, most notably along the Ringstrasse, that chain of broad boulevards which encircles the old town.

Salzburg is an ecclesiastical counterweight. For many hundreds of years the city survived as an independent state ruled y its archbishops, whose dramatic fortress dominates the scene. They called into being from 1600 onwards its grand Baroque monuments, which radiate an incomparable atmosphere of elegance and repose.

Not in the least we observe the great abbeys which, uniquely in Europe, have survived intact from the early Middle Ages to the present day. A number of the most spectacular of them lie on or near the Danube between Salzburg and Vienna: Kremsmünster, St. Forian, Melk, Göttweig, Klosterneuburg. Many of them built pompous Baroque suites of rooms to house the imperial family an its occasional visits, and these perhaps convey to the visitor better than anything else that harmony of worldliness and piety which forms the Austrian tradition in the visual arts no less than the music of Mozart or Bruckner.