Laid out in the 1860s by garden director Rudolf Siebeck to a design by court painter Joseph Selleny, the Stadtpark an archetypical city park, and seems to be much enjoyed by the locals.
Running through the middle of it is the River Wien, known colloquially as the Wienfluss, after which the city was named.
The river is subject to huge variations in flow. This used to cause devastating floods which were sometimes accompanied by cholera,
so between 1895 and 1899 an artificial river bed consisting almost entirely of concrete was installed. When the water is low, the end result is not very pretty, it has to be said.
Scattered throughout the park are statues of famous Viennese artists, writers, and composers. Most notably, the gold plated bronze statue of Johann Strauss (1825 to 1899) which was unveiled in 1921.
When the artificial river bed of the River Wien was installed, part of the Stadtbahn (City Railway) was built alongside it, only separated from it by a wall. The stations were all designed by Vienna's great Art Nouveau architect, Otto Wagner.
From 1976 the line was converted to become part of line U4 of Vienna's U-Bahn, and many of the stations were extensively modified. At platform level, Stadtpark Station is the only one to have survived largely unaltered, although many of the other ticket offices have been retained.
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