Prater & the Giant Ferris Wheel

Landmark · Leopoldstadt (2nd)Vienna, Austria

The Riesenrad has turned since 1897, when it was put up for Franz Joseph's golden jubilee by an English engineer named Walter Bassett, who built the same kind of wheel in London, Blackpool and Paris. Vienna's is the only one of his left. It stands just under 65 metres and carries fifteen wooden gondolas — it was built with thirty, and when it was rebuilt after wartime damage only half went back, which is why the gaps between them are so wide. It runs slowly enough that a full turn is a conversation rather than a ride. Around it spreads the Wurstelprater, a fairground you walk into off the street and pay for by the ride: roller coasters, ghost trains, a swing tower, shooting galleries, beer gardens and the smell of grilled sausage and fried dough. It is unpolished and genuinely local. Behind it the Prater proper is a very large park — imperial hunting ground until Joseph II opened it to the public in 1766 — with a chestnut avenue running straight through it for 4.4 kilometres.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Dusk is the ride — the wheel turns slowly and the city lights come on during a single revolution, which is the difference between a view and a good one.
Nobody owns the fairground — the city leases the plots to individual showmen who run their own stands at their own risk, which is why the neon, the music and the standard of the rides change every few metres.
Give the avenue an hour if you have one — the chestnut alley behind the fairground is where the city runs, cycles and walks off lunch, and it is a completely different Prater from the one with the wheel in it.

Things to do

1
Take a turn as the lights come on
A ride lasts fifteen to twenty minutes with the boarding stops; the wheel itself turns once in a little over four. The cabins are big enough to walk around in. Go up while there is still light in the sky: the city switches on beneath you during the turn, and the wheel is slow enough that you notice it happening rather than arriving at it.
2
Walk the Hauptallee
Behind the fairground a chestnut avenue runs straight for 4.4 kilometres with no cars on it. It is full of runners, cyclists, prams and old men on benches, and about ten minutes along it the noise of the rides disappears completely.
3
Walk into the Wurstelprater
Past the wheel the fairground begins with no gate and no ticket — you walk in off the street and pay at whatever you decide to ride, among more than 250 separate attractions. Ghost trains and shooting galleries stand next to a 117-metre swing tower that throws its chairs out at 60 km/h. At the far end the Schweizerhaus has been serving the same roast pork knuckle since 1920.