AustLit

'Vienna's Ringstrasse, built from 1865 on the site of the old city wall, has long been derided for its architecture. Because it is a domain of revivalist styles, including neo-Renaissance, neo-Baroque and neo-Gothic, modernists have been contemptuous. But the Ringstrasse has recently been reappraised, with Australia playing a part. A dinner in Melbourne in 2011 to celebrate the opening of the National Gallery of Victoria's Vienna Art and Design — Australia's first international exhibition focused on Vienna around 1900 — was crucial. At that dinner, one of the exhibition's curators, Christian Witt-Dering, suggested to representatives of the Austrian National Tourist Office that Vienna mark the sesquicentenary of the Ringstrasse in 2015. Witt-Diking proposed that the city celebrate the Ring as one of the world's great boulevards, and so it did, triggering a reappraisal that led Joseph Koerner in Burlington Magazine to declare the Ring 'the world's greatest instance of Historicism in architecture'. (Introduction)