Esperantopark und Girardipark

Esperantopark and Girardipark are two small green spaces separated by a footpath in Vienna’s first district. They sit on a large traffic island in Friedrichstraße, close to Resselpark and Rosa-Mayreder-Park. This whole area around Karlsplatz was once part of the glacis outside the old city walls and crossed by the Wien river. In the 19th century the river was channelled underground and the Elisabethbrücke removed, leaving space for the Stadtbahn and later the U-Bahn. In 2006 the Swedish landscape architect Sven-Ingvar Andersson redesigned the whole Karlsplatz zone, creating the two parks we see today. The Esperantopark contains a bronze bust of Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, founder of the planned language Esperanto, set on a tall pedestal. The monument was made in 1958 by Josef Müller-Weidler and originally stood on Börseplatz. It honours the Esperanto movement, which held its first Vienna congress in 1910 and later world congresses in 1970 and 1992. Nearby is an entrance to the Vienna sewer system, opened for special “Third Man” tours inspired by the film starring Orson Welles. The adjoining Girardipark features a life-size stone statue of the actor Alexander Girardi, created in 1929 by Otto Hofner, showing him as Valentin with a plane under his arm from Ferdinand Raimund’s play “Der Verschwender”. Visitors find raised flower beds arranged as ornamental patterns in Esperantopark, offering a striking sight amid busy roads. The sewer entrance is marked by an iron grille, while the Girardi statue stands on a low plinth surrounded by paving. Both parks are compact and lack benches, so they are best viewed rather than lingered in. The quiet corners give a brief contrast to the traffic outside, and the monuments recall two important figures in Vienna’s cultural and linguistic history.