This chapter discusses aspects of the political, social and intellectual situation in Leopold Mozart's Vienna—aspects which are of real importance to Mozart scholarship but which have been neglected or actually misrepresented. The official court dress remained the black 'Spanish mantle', brought to Vienna by the Habsburgs in the sixteenth century. Most accounts of Mozart's Vienna have neglected the city's role as capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Under Charles Burney VI there had existed in Vienna not one court but two, his court as ruler of the Austrian monarchy and his court as Holy Roman Emperor. Suppression of monasteries was one of the most conspicuous developments in Mozart's Vienna. In 1790, however, Johann Pezzl saw as one of the characteristics of old Vienna 'Pardons—a pleasant prerogative of the great', whereas, by contrast, in the new Vienna he claimed to find 'Strict fairness for all'.