VIENNA: EMPIRE, DYNASTY AND DREAM

BBC Four, Thursday, 9pm

FOR more than a millennium Vienna was the pivotal city in Europe. From the age of the Romans until World War II, its strategic position on the River Danube made it witness to war, intrigue, deceit and struggles for power.

In this new threepart series, writer and broadcaster Simon Sebag Montefiore tells the story of an extraordinary city, through the Habsburgs who ruled it – and through those who tried to take it from them.

Home to the Holy Roman Emperors and the target of Ottoman aggression, Vienna is a city that nurtured Gothic architecture and Baroque music. This is a story in which Napoleon, Hitler, Mozart, Strauss, Freud, Stalin and Klimt all played their part.

Episode one begins over 900 years ago, with a Swiss German family, named after their castle – Schloss Habsburg. A family that emerged from bloody dynastic wars and religious conflict to become a central power in Europe.

Choosing diplomacy over the battlefield, Emperor Maximilian I brokered some of the biggest dynastic matches in European history and created an empire that included South America, Spain, Italy and much of Central Europe.

From Maximilian onwards, the history of the Habsburgs became the history of Europe. The dynasty formed Europe’s front line in the struggle to defend Christendom from the Ottoman Islamic advance, and the Catholic Church from the Protestant revolutionaries who plotted to destroy it.