Who’s Swarming Vienna’s Best Real Estate?
Why Viennese bees are the green city’s most important real estate developers.
There’s not much about Vienna that other European cities can’t boast, too. Cobblestone streets, historic churches, rich museums of art and culture; a penchant for good bread or a town square, a statue cast in bronze that greens like an impeccably kept lawn.
But when you stand in Vienna, Vienna stands apart. There’s an affect of the air, a “Stimmung” that oozes like honey from the countless baroque buildings and Hapsburg homes. In Spring, the cherry blossoms bloom first, snowing delicate pink petals onto cafe patios while the greenest of grasses sprout up under the tram tracks. 51% of the city’s total area is covered in an astounding green — the color of my envy of its nearly 2 million residents. There’s no shortage of evidence that natural space is vital to a high quality urban environment, and I have to believe the enormous portion of greenery in this city contributes to its unique and fantastical aura.
The centuries-long seat of the Austria-Hungarian Empire naturally had manicured gardens and sprawling courts, but today’s green spaces rival Vienna’s world class buildings and sights themselves in beauty. During my March visit, abounding blossoms and lush lawns shocked me out of my grey Berliner haze. I couldn’t fathom how Vienna wasn’t warding off surges of expats and wealthy Austrians flocking to its most lucrative real estate locales.
Well, I wasn’t entirely wrong. The best locations — often the prominent ones with historical value — are already occupied by more residents than I ever thought possible. Penthouses and perches overlooking courtyards, the populations cramming into the city’s prime locales are none other than Vienna’s more than 6,000 beehives.
Obscured by the city’s perpetual philosophical legacy, its apian history is a rich honey-gold. The bee dance was discovered by a Viennese Nobel Prize recipient 200 years after the singularity that was Empress Maria Theresa founded the world’s first beekeeping school in Vienna. World Bee Day occurs on the 20th of May, head beekeeper to the Empress Anton Janša’s birthday. Today, over 700 city beekeepers make up the Vienna Stadtimker, tending to the hives and the city’s population of millions of buzzing workers.
The bees are no gentrifiers, in fact, they return more to the city than they take up in residential space. Residing on the roofs of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the University of Vienna, the Kunst Haus Wien, the State Opera, the City Hall, the Austrian Mint, and the Secession — not to mention the roofs of Hotel InterContinental, Hotel Daniel, and 25hours Hotel — the bees pay more than fair rent.
If we’re resigned to capital, the bees make some of the city’s best honey, available for purchase in select locations after city beekeeping master Thomas Zelenka and his colleagues harvest from the hives.
But follow the flutter of their minuscule wings and it won’t take long to find a site for which they’re to thank. 990 municipal parks play conjunctively with Austria’s healthiest bee population.
It’s hard to falsify this blend of urbanism and greenery in an unhealthy ecosystem as urban as this capital city. There’s a symbiosis between these bees and the Viennese — a healthy repertoire of pollination and cultivation that breathes life into the blooming city. Inside the municipal city limits lie some 800 farms, harvesting more cucumbers, eggplants, parsley, tomatoes, and chili peppers that in the remainder of Austria’s provinces combined.
Imperial might could have flourished for centuries under the Hapsburgs, but urban ecosystems of this magnitude in an era of rising climate catastrophe are royally difficult to falsify.
Deliberating the impacts of green space on urban environments is essentially reducible to the quantitative aspects of life quality and psychological indicators.
Palpability of joy in the air, however, is not. Wafting notes of cherry blossoms is not. Healthy grass’s unmistakable caress on bare feet as Spring makes its first appearance, is not.
Vienna echoes the chirps of street-side birds and hums with the rhythm of cyclists along its Ring road — and I swear, if you stop and stand still, just for a heartbeat’s longer than a moment. Breathe in, breath out. You’ll hear the sound of bee wings buzzing beside you.
Give them my thanks.