Tivoli

Tivoli was a grand pleasure garden in the former Vienna suburb of Obermeidling. It stood on the Green Hill between what are now Hohenberg Street, Tivoli Lane and Green Hill Street in today’s 12th district of Meidling. The site once belonged to a fashionable villa quarter with a spa near the imperial Schönbrunn Palace. Its centrepiece was a tall viewing platform that looked out over the Vienna Woods and the city beyond. The garden opened in 1830 after Berlin entrepreneurs Friedrich Emil Gericke and Ernst Wagner built a luxury entertainment complex for the upper classes. A curved wooden chute with four parallel tracks and about fifteen two-seat cars carried guests down the slope. Johann Strauss the elder and his orchestra played waltzes and dances in a garden pavilion, introducing new compositions such as the Tivoli Slide Waltz and the Tivoli Joy Festival Dances. The opening gala was attended by the emperor and empress, and later festivals featured fireworks by Johann Georg Stuwer and Chinese lantern displays. Later owners turned Tivoli into a dairy and snack station called Little Tivoli, where the young Johann Strauss the younger first conducted his Patriotic March and Berglieder Waltz. Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele visited in the early 20th century. A painted wooden pavilion by Anton Hlavaček and a bust of the artist marked the spot until the park closed in 1967, was burned in 1980 and demolished in 1991. Today the names Tivoli, Tivoli Bridge and Tivoli Lane recall the vanished pleasure garden.