From Vienna to Budapest, the two pearls of the Danube joined by a river cruise
Vienna and Budapest are approximately 250 kilometers away. Two and a half hours by car. But there is an alternative way to visit the two cities: on a river cruise. A journey where slowness reigns supreme, where time is lulled by the silence of the Danube and framed by the beauty of the surrounding landscapes. The only river in the world with a waltz that bears his name and, although not always blue like Johann Strauss, full of history told by the buildings erected on its banks.
We made that four-day voyage of navigation, from Vienna to Budapest via Bratislava, Slovakia, we did aboard the Illumination, one of the two ships thatAvalon Waterways has chosen to open up to Italian tourists.
Melk Abbey, symbol of a millennium
The first stage of the journey starts from Melk, a small Austrian town of about five thousand inhabitants which, however, houses the ancient Benedictine monastery, one of the most famous monastic sites in the world declared a Unesco heritage.
The structure was founded in 1089 when Leopold II, Margrave of Austria, donated one of his castles to the Benedictine monks of Lambach Abbey. A school was founded there in the 12th century and the abbey library soon became famous for its large collection of manuscripts.
Today’s baroque abbey was built between 1702 and 1736 by the architect Jakob Prandtauer. The main portal, attributed to the hand of Antonio Beduzzi (1711), is surmounted by two large statues of Christ and of San Pietro and San Paolo (1738).
Of great impact are above all the abbey church with frescoes by Johann Michael Rottmayr and the library in whose shelves, decorated with gilding, there are about 90 thousand volumes including precious manuscripts of the ninth century and the year of incunabula. There are also two globes (celestial and terrestrial) by Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (made around 1690).
In Melk, the oldest street in the city is Sterngasse, once the main street. There the houses have paintings on the walls which indicate which artisans worked there.
Some of these houses are intended for internal gardens. The oldest building in Melk, called Haus auf dem Stein, was built during the 15th century and has a facade covered with climbing plants. Another building, called Schiffsmeisterhaus, shows on the facade the indication of the height reached by the floods of the river over the centuries: the highest mark is from 1501, 15.8 meters above the usual level.
The treasures of Vienna
The second stage of the journey, lulled by the Danube, is Vienna. But to get there the river boat passes through the Wachau valley, one of the most beautiful valleys of the Danube: there the nature of the landscapes meets the history of medieval villages and castles. In 2000 this valley was included in the Unesco World Heritage List.
The visit of Vienna cannot fail to start from its treasures of the Ringstrasse, a series of nineteenth-century avenues whose circular path traced the layout of the medieval walls that surrounded the historic center of the Austrian capital.
The “ring road” was built when Emperor Franz Joseph I of Habsburg ordered, in 1857, the dismantling of the old walls and adjacent free spaces: in their place, an elegant double tree-lined avenue was to be built which would have served as an element of union between the Hofburg, the center of Austrian power for more than six centuries, with the bourgeois neighborhoods that grew up outside the walls.
Another stop on the tour is the Schonbrunn Palace, the Cultural Gem of Austria and the most visited place in the city: the Castle, seat of the Habsburg imperial house from 1730 to 1918, is located in Hietzing, on the western outskirts of Vienna.
In view of the exclusive experiences that this type of cruise offers, tourists have the opportunity to experience a classical music concert where the Viennese Waltz is the host: for a small audience,
The awakening of Budapest
Third and last stop is that of Budapest. The arrival by ship in the Hungarian ship is probably among the most exciting parts of the view from the river of the capital of the capital of the two beauties embroidered by the historic and characteristic bridges of the city. If the thought can go to the not distant Ukrainian conflict, the thing that strikes the most of the city is the liveliness of the works that are taking over many historic buildings to restore them to their ancient splendor.
From the Buda ship, lying in the panoramic rooms or on the upper deck, you can admire the Rock Castle, the rock church on Gellért Hill and the Liberation Monument, also known as the “Statue of Liberty”.
On the other side of the shore, that of Pest, the eye cannot miss the Parliament building, dating back to 1885, but also modern buildings such as the “whale”, a glass structure reminiscent of the cetacean, built in 2013, today the seat of shops and clubs.
Among the possible visits you cannot miss the Matthias Church, dating back to 1250, where it is possible to see a unique mixture of aesthetics, fantasies, the majolica of Mattia Corvino.
Climbing the staircase, a bit narrow but also practicable by those of “important” size (as long as they have a good breath), you reach the top of the structure from which you can have a glimpse of the most important buildings of Buda.
In Pest it is possible to visit the Liget complex, where the House of Music emerges, a building designed by the architect Sou Fujimoto and characterized by Musica by a series of holes on the roof which also grow trees placed at its entrance.
The House of Music offers an artistic experience that combines landscape, architecture and exhibition design to offer its visitors new perspectives on music production and how sound is a fundamental part of our lives.
For the visit of the Hungarian capital also a destination as historical as it is worldly: it is the Cafe New York. This café owes its origins to the American insurance company New York Life Insurance Company which decided in 1984 to open its headquarters in Budapest and built the New York Palace, a place with an eclectic and sumptuous architecture, the highest expression of intellectual culture and European artistic.
On the ground floor of the New York Palace, there is a café on four floors: this is how the New York Cafe was born, which soon became a place where artists and intellectuals meet. Today it is an elegant and worldly place where photo and social enthusiasts cannot fail to go.
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