The Danube Island 13 Miles of Freedom

Built between 1972 and 1988 together with the New Danube as part of Vienna’s flood protection system, the Danube Island has become an integral element of the city’s identity. When the project began in 1969, no one anticipated that the 13-mile-long and up to 800-foot-wide strip of land would one day attract more than 200,000 people on summer days.

Originally conceived as a purely technical and highly controversial flood-control measure, the project gradually evolved over three decades of planning and construction into a diverse natural and recreational space. Early proposals for high-rises, a military training ground, or even a central railway station on the island were abandoned, as was the idea of building it solely as a dam without access to the New Danube. Influenced in part by the environmental movement of the 1970s, advocates argued for a design that would preserve the island as a largely natural landscape.

The Wien Museum exhibition traces both the history and the present of this unique urban landscape. It examines the long search for effective flood protection for Vienna, the informal uses of the former floodplain that foreshadowed the island’s later role, and the complex planning and construction behind the project. At the same time, it highlights the island’s ecological and social importance today, as one of Vienna’s most important open spaces in a city that is becoming ever denser and hotter.