Eisenstadt

Eisenstadt is the capital city of the Austrian state of Burgenland, at the foot of the Leitha Mountains about 12 kilometers from the Hungarian border. Part of the Kingdom of Hungary within the Habsburg Empire from 1648 to 1921, it was the seat of the Esterhazy noble family, whose patronage brought the composer Joseph Haydn to live and work there as a court musician, and it became Burgenland's provincial capital in 1925 after the region's cession to Austria in 1921. Heavily bombarded in the Second World War, the city was captured by Soviet forces on 2 April 1945 and remained under Soviet occupation until 1955; as of 2025 it had 16,118 residents, the smallest of Austria's state capitals and the country's thirty-eighth largest city overall.