See the sights. Know the story. Travel deeper.

Most travel books tell you where to stand for the best view of Schönbrunn Palace.

This one tells you why Vienna became the city that kept starting over, and why travelers have never really stopped coming back.

Backstory Atlas Vienna isn't a checklist of palaces and coffeehouses. It's a smart, story-driven companion for curious travelers and history-interested readers who want to understand the forces behind what they're seeing.

• How did a Roman river fortress become the seat of an empire covering fifty million people?
• Why did Vienna's own housing program end up shelled by its own government?
• And why does a small, neutral country's capital now host more international diplomacy than cities many times its size?

Each chapter explores one of the forces that shaped Vienna's lasting appeal, from the Roman frontier and Habsburg dynasty-building to the Ottoman sieges, the musical patronage economy, the Ringstrasse's monumental boulevard, and the difficult twentieth century that nearly broke the city before it reinvented itself once more.

This is the backstory that changes everything you see.

A Backstory Atlas book.