Lainzer Tiergarten#

Lainzer Tiergarten Nature Preserve, a conservation area in the 13th district of Vienna, a part of the southern Vienna Woods covering 2500 hectares, situated between the River Wien valley and the Liesingbach valley; natural recreation area, surrounded by a wall, on the western outskirts of the built-up area of Vienna. The Hubertuswarte observation point is situated on the highest peak, the Kaltbruendl mountain (508 m); several cork oak trees can be found close to Johannserkogel (377 m). The Lainzer Tiergarten has always been famous for its large game population (which was, however, heavily reduced by the end of the war): e.g.: deer, fallow deer, roe deer, moufflons, wild boar. It has been open to the public since 1919 (more than 300,000 visitors a year), in recent years there has been a tendency to turn it into a nature reserve with nature trails, etc.

Emperor Ferdinand I had a wooden fence built around the imperial hunting-ground in 1561. Joseph II had the fence replaced by a 24.2 km long stone wall in 1781. The forester´s lodge built in 1782 was replaced by a refuge near the Hirschgstemm (407 m) in 1958. From 1882 until 1886 C. v. Hasenauer built the Hermesvilla Hunting Lodge for Empress Elisabeth in the eastern part of the Lainzer Tiergarten. The Hermesvilla was decorated with the works of famous artists (H. Makart, G. Klimt, R. Weyr etc.). It suffered great damage during the war in 1945. The Lainzer Tiergarten became a part of the property of the Disabled Veterans Trust in 1919. When the trust was dissolved in 1937, it fell to the City of Vienna and became a part of the territory of Vienna in 1938 (and, after the post-war territorial reorganisation, definitively incorporated into the City of Vienna in 1954). In 1918 the "Friedensstadt-Siedlung" settlement and from 1949 until 1953 the "Kongress-Siedlung" settlement emerged on the south-eastern outskirts of the Lainzer Tiergarten. The north-western corner was cut off by the construction of the West-Autobahn A 1 motorway (Vienna exit).