Kahlenberg

The Kahlenberg is a 484-meter hill in the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald) north of the city from which, on 12 September 1683, Polish King Jan III Sobieski launched the largest cavalry charge in history: 18,000 horsemen descending into the Ottoman besieging forces and breaking a two-month siege that had brought Vienna to the edge of starvation and surrender.

The hill from which the 1683 Battle of Vienna was won: Polish King Jan III Sobieski’s 18,000-horseman cavalry charge from these slopes broke the Ottoman siege and ended the Ottoman Empire’s westward expansion. The Josefskirche on the summit (1734) is staffed by a Polish religious order as permanent memorial to that alliance. Below the summit, the Heuriger (wine tavern) villages of Grinzing and Nussdorf operate under a tradition that began here in 1784 when Joseph II decreed vintners could sell their own wine on their premises. Bus 38A from Heiligenstadt.