ABSTRACT
The site of Vienna lies at the point where the Danube enters a lowland enclosed between the Wienerwald, that tapers out north-eastwards from the eastern Alps to impinge on the river and embrace the modern city, and the parallel line of the Leithagebirge and the Little Carpathians, the gap between which is commanded by the town of Bratislava. This triangular lowland stretches south from the Danube and tapers towards Neunkirchen over a distance of about forty miles, and north from the Danube beyond the wide gravel plains of the Marchfeld to the fertile lowland of the March valley. At the site of the city two great natural routeways intersect. One of these extends from east to west, along the Danube valley from southern Germany to south-eastern Europe, and the other runs from north to south, through the Moravian Gate between the Sudetes and the Beskides, southwards across the Danube, and thence around the eastern Alps or across their low passes—of which the Semmering is the most important—to the head of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean.
