" This formerly
belonged to the fortifications of the city, but as the suburbs grew up
so rapidly on all sides, it was changed appropriately to a public walk.
The city is still surrounded with a massive wall and a deep wide moat,
but, since it was taken by Napoleon in 1809, the moat has been changed
into a garden with a beautiful carriage-road along the bottom around the
whole city.
It is a beautiful sight to stand on the summit of the wall and look over
the broad Glacis, with its shady roads branching in every direction and
filled with inexhaustible streams of people. The Vorstaedte, or new
cities, stretch in a circle, around beyond this; all the finest
buildings front on the Glacis, among which the splendid Vienna Theater
and the church of San Carlo Borromeo are conspicuous. The mountains of
the Vienna forest bound the view, with here and there a stately castle
on their woody summits.
There is no lack of places for pleasure or amusement. Besides the
numberless walks of the Glacis there are the imperial gardens, with
their cool shades and flowers and fountains; the Augarten, laid out and
opened to the public by the Emperor Joseph; and the Prater, the largest
and most beautiful of all. It lies on an island formed by the arms of
the Danube, and is between two and three miles square.
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