The 1873 World’s Fair was an influential showcase for arts, crafts and technology in Vienna. It changed the city's destiny forever as it marks its 150th year in 2023 with a big celebration.
It starts with the Weltmuseum Wien, an ethnographic museum that houses some of the most important collections of non-European cultures.
From January onwards, the Weltmuseum Wien will launch a unique system to guide visitors through the rooms in the spirit of the World’s Fair. There will also be special guided tours and a special booklet.
Two of its exhibition halls are to be dedicated to the Fair, which was all about Japan and the Near, Middle and Far East opening up to Europe.
The Fair was the first to feature Japan – and the first with notable contributions from Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, the Ottoman Empire and Persia, according to Vienna Tourist Board.
Other Viennese museums will offer special exhibitions over the year. The Vienna Museum of Technology launched a Women at Work exhibition in May, exploring the Women’s Pavilion, a unique feature of the Vienna World’s Fair that gave female working environments their space at a World’s Fair for the first time.
Later, in June, the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts will honor J. & L. Lobmeyr, a traditional Viennese fine crystal glassmaker and specialist chandelier manufacturer that was part of the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair.
Back then, alongside putting Vienna on the map, the fair brought further impetus to the city when it was proliferating. The event saw the city lay the groundwork for infrastructure that still contributes to the city’s high standard of living. That started with constructing key thoroughfares to pipelines bringing water from the Alps to the Viennese, a technical breakthrough at the time.
Vienna saw the construction of six new stations and railway lines that helped make the city a hub of Central European rail travel.
Some of the city’s most historic hotels sprang up at that time, from the Imperial to the Palais Hansen Kempinski, alongside restaurants and cafes such as Landtmann along the Ringstrasse boulevard.
The fair was also a starting point for Vienna to increasingly become a venue for international congresses.
