The Stadtpark opened in 1862 as the first large municipal park on the new Ringstrasse, on ground freed by the demolition of the walls. It was designed in the loose English manner — curving paths, open lawns, specimen trees — as a deliberate contrast to Baroque geometry. The little River Wien runs through the middle of it, and where it does, Friedrich Ohmann and Josef Hackhofer dressed the flood works in white stone pavilions and balustrades, so that a piece of civil engineering became the prettiest thing in the park.
The park is also full of monuments to Viennese composers and artists. A seated Schubert and busts of Bruckner and Lehár stand among the trees, but the one almost every visitor stops to photograph is the monument to Johann Strauss the younger. It is gilded, and shows him playing his violin under a white marble arch; it is usually called the most photographed statue in the city. By day the park works as a lunch break for the offices on the Ring, and at the edge stands the Kursalon, a hall built for spa concerts where ensembles still play Strauss and Mozart programmes nightly for visitors.