Vivacious Vienna: Exploring the City

During my February trip to Vienna for the MCAA General Assembly, I had the chance to look around the city center as well as some sectors not far from the center.

Vienna is an architect’s dreamland, full of beautiful spaces and artifacts old and new. In fact, the architect/urbanist/painter/historian Camillo Sitte documented many of the world’s most successful plazas in his quest to define what makes a public space beautiful. Many of his favorites plazas are located in Vienna. I often referenced his book “The Art of Building Cities”, published in 1945, when I was an architecture student and later an architecture professor.

Although I actually only had six hours to explore Vienna after the Assembly concluded, I took in plenty of sites. Below, I’ve posted my slide shows of spectacular architecture.

The slide shows start in Alservorstadt, with the Votive Church (Votivkirche), Hotel Regina, and University of Vienna. The slides proceed downtown and show visits to two more churches (Stephansdom and Der Graben), concluding with the Globe Museum. In other posts, I share photos from Hundertwasser and Otto Wagner ‘s Austria Post Headquarters or “Osterr Postparkasse” (blog forthcoming).

Votive Church (Votivkirche) 

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Hotel Regina

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The University of Vienna

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Vienna City Center

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Stephansdom

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Der Graben

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Globe Museum

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Learning London: Enchanting Holland Park and Victorian House Museum

A couple of weekends ago, we visited Holland Park on both Saturday and Sunday. There was too much to see in the area for just one go. We had to spread it out. In fact, we’d also visited a weekend prior, bringing our 2019 total to three days.

In this blog, I’ll show you around the park and give you a peek inside one of the nearby Victorian house museums, 18 Stafford Terrace.

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On all three of our recent our visits to Holland Park, we were en route to the Design Museum. 

Walking Cards

In addition to using the handy walking cards pictures below, I also referenced my guidebooks and the internet to sketch out our trips.

Kyoto Japanese Garden

These beautifully designed and cultivated gardens boast a waterfall and a pride of peacocks.

Holland House

This house was greatly destroyed during the Second World War, but part of it lives on to delight the park’s visitors.

Belvedere Restaurant

There’s a lovely, posh restaurant in the park. We had a splurge.

18 Stafford Terrace

This is one of two Victorian house museums near Holland Park and the Design Museum. This one, on Stafford Terrace which runs parallel to Kensington Hight Street, was once home to an illustrator for Punch magazine, Edward L. Sambourne. It’s a lovely house filled with his artwork. It’s a delight to see how the stately homes on this terrace are laid out and lived in. This one is furnished in the “Aesthetic Movement.”

Fulbright Programs in Europe/Euraisa — Upcoming Webinar

I received the following email announcement today, and thought you might be interested.  If you’ve ever considered applying for a Fulbright position, there’s no time like the present!

INVITATION TO JOIN US FOR A WEBINAR

Webinar Title: What’s New in Europe/Eurasia for 2015-2016
Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT

Join CIES staff who work on the U.S. Scholar Program for a look at the large number of awards in the 2015-2016 competition available across Europe and Eurasia for scholars, professionals and administrators. Opportunities exist for teaching, conducting research or combining both.

Please be sure to register to reserve your seat for this webinar. The webinars are archived in order for you to review past sessions that you may have missed.

Sincerely,

Bill McShane
Program Officer, Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program
Institute of International Education (IIE)
Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES)
202-686-8665
wmcshane@iie.org