Vienna

Somehow I took a long time to visit Vienna for the first time. Without thinking much about it, I was expecting it to be a pretty but fairly small city in keeping with the image of modern Austria that I have in my head. Clearly I was forgetting Vienna's history.
You're immediately reminded that this city was for a long time the centre of a major European empire, and a cultural powerhouse. Palaces, galleries, opera houses, grand gardens. The scale of the architecture and city planning alone is constantly impressive.