Wiener Neustadt

Wiener Neustadt was founded as a planned fortress town south of Vienna in the 1190s. Duke Leopold V used ransom money received for Richard the Lionheart to help build it near the Hungarian frontier. Its rectangular streets, walls and castle protected a market and a ducal mint. In the fifteenth century Emperor Frederick III made Neustadt one of his principal residences, and his son Maximilian was born here.

King Matthias Corvinus captured the city in 1487 after a long siege; Maximilian recovered it after his death and expelled its Jewish community in 1496. In 1752 Maria Theresa's military academy opened in the castle. An earthquake damaged the city in 1768, and the castle was rebuilt. Emperor Joseph II moved the bishopric to Sankt Pölten in 1785; former monastic buildings subsequently housed manufactures. A great fire in 1834 destroyed hundreds of buildings and killed dozens of people.