Vienna Giant Wheel

The Wiener Riesenrad is a steel Ferris wheel with wooden gondolas, built in 1897 by British engineer Walter Basset to mark the 50th anniversary of Emperor Franz Joseph's reign. In 1945 the wheel was nearly destroyed by fire — the steel frame survived but the wooden gondolas were rebuilt in a simplified form, reducing their number from the original 30 to just 15. The wheel's global fame owes much to Carol Reed's 1949 film noir 'The Third Man', in which Orson Welles delivers his celebrated cuckoo clock speech from inside one of the gondolas. Today a single revolution takes roughly 20 minutes, lifting visitors to 64.75 metres for wide views over Vienna, with several gondolas fitted out as miniature dioramas tracing the city's history.

One of the world's oldest operating Ferris wheels, 12-minute rotation, 1930s film backdrop.