Description

This city hiking path explores The Prater, Vienna’s huge public park in Leopoldstadt.

The path begins along the Hauptallee and near the amusement park, but soon finds peace and quiet in the “Green Prater,” which is the larger and more natural portion of the park.

It’s a mosaic of forests, fields, and waters interlaced with pathways–a getaway to nature in the middle of the city. The Prater boasts a diversity of recreation opportunities.

If you don’t care for roller coasters and ferris wheels, you can surely find something else to enjoy.

Take, for instance, the arrow-straight roadway called Hauptallee, which is lined with chestnut trees that light up in fall.

It’s closed to motor vehicles, reserved for foot and bicycle travel only, and famously makes part of the course for the Vienna Marathon. The Prater also has public sports fields, playgrounds, a disc golf course, skatepark, and slackline park.

There are opportunities for boating, swimming, fishing, birdwatching, dining, and numerous other forms of leisure.

You can also learn a bit of Viennese history in signs and monuments throughout the park. Natural attractions include: tracts of forest and the creatures that live in them, landscaped gardens, and water features.

A section of the city hiking path goes along Heustadelwasser, an old channel of the Danube that’s now a calm, elongate pond surrounded by trees. For food and drink, you may want to stop at Lusthaus, a former hunting lodge turned classy restaurant.

Additional food options can be found along the bounds of The Prater, especially in the vicinity of the amusement park. Stadtwanderweg 9 explores all of this, on a mix of dirt and paved paths that encircle most of The Prater.

There are, of course, many other paths in the park as well, so there’s no reason not to venture off route to find more. Sources: https://www.wien.gv.at/umwelt/wald/freizeit/wandern/wege/wanderweg9.html https://www.wien.info/en/sightseeing/prater/green-prater