You can find this Ferris wheel at Prater in Vienna. Prater is an amusement park filled with attractions for young and old and what surprised me most is it`s in the city. The giant Ferris Wheel or Wiener Riesenrad was built in 1896 by a British engineer by the name of Walter Basset and one of the earliest Ferris wheels ever built. The Ferris wheel made an appearance in the movie “The Third Man” and one of the James Bond movies.
In practical fashion for German, Riesenrad translates simply to Giant-Wheel. I like the simplicity of it.
I haven’t been to Prater in over 10 years, but it is just a neat place to walk through. Studying there for a summer, it was kind of cool to imagine what it would have been like in 1896. What would the people have thought of it, especially as it is years before the Eiffel tower.