Hetztheater

Vienna's Hetztheater operated from 1755 to 1796 as a baroque arena for staged animal fights, where dogs were set against bears, bulls and wild boars before crowds of nobles and commoners. Built under Maria Theresa, it belonged to a network of similar venues stretching from Berlin to Warsaw. After a fire in 1796 it was never rebuilt, and Emperor Franz II soon banned the bloody spectacles outright. Nothing of the structure survives in Leopoldstadt today, but the street name Hetzgasse still carries its memory. The trail now lives only in old engravings and city archives between Praterstrasse and the Danube Canal.