Thanks to the university, its professors and the young people it attracted and produced, Innsbruck also sniffed the morning air of the Enlightenment in the 18th century in the era of Maria Theresa, even if the Jesuit faculty leadership put the brakes on it. 1741 saw the founding of the Societas Academica Litteraria a circle of scholars in the Taxispalais. The masonic lodge was founded in 1777 To the three mountains, four years later, the Tyrolean Society for Arts and Science was founded. The spirit of reason in the time of Maria Theresa and Emperor Joseph also found its way into Innsbruck's elite. Spurred on by the French Revolution, some students even declared their allegiance to the Jacobins. Under Emperor Franz, all these associations were banned and strictly monitored after the declaration of war on France in 1794. Enlightenment ideas were frowned upon by large sections of the population even before the French Revolution. At the latest after the beheading of Marie Antoinette, the Emperor's sister, and the outbreak of war between the French Republic and the monarchies of Europe, they were considered dangerous. Who wanted to be considered a Jacobin when it came to defending their homeland?

After the Napoleonic Wars, Innsbruck was slow to recover, both economically and mentally. Adalbert Stifter (1805 -1868), probably the most famous writer of Austrian Romanticism, described Innsbruck in the 1830s in his travelogue Tyrol and Vorarlberg as follows:

„The inns were bad, the pavements wretched, long gutters overhung the narrow streets, which were bordered on both sides by dull arches... the beautiful banks of the Inn were unpaved, but covered with heaps of rubbish and criss-crossed by cesspools.“

Die kleine Stadt am Rande des Kaiserreiches hatte etwas mehr als 12.000 Einwohner, „ohne die Soldaten, Studenten und Fremden zu rechnen“. University, grammar school, Reading casino, music club, theatre and museum were evidence of a developing, modern urban culture. There was a Deutsches Kaffeehaus, a Restoration in the courtyard garden and several traditional inns such as the White cross, the Österreichischen Hofwhich Grape, das Katzung, das Mouthingeach of which Goldenen Adler, Stern und Hirsch. After 1830, the open sewers were blocked and made more hygienic, roads were repaired and bridges renovated. The overdue straightening and taming of the Inn and Sill rivers, which had begun before the turmoil of war, was also tackled. The biggest innovation for the population came in 1830, when oil lamps lit up the town at night. It was probably just a dim twilight created by the more than 150 lamps mounted on pillars and arm chandeliers, but for contemporaries it was a true revolution.

Die bayerische Besatzung war verschwunden, die Ideen der Denker der Aufklärung und der Französischen Revolution hatten sich aber in einigen Köpfen des städtischen Milieus verfangen. Natürlich waren es keine atheistischen, sozialistischen oder gar umstürzlerischen Gedanken, die sich breit machten. Es ging vor allem um wirtschaftliche, politische und gesellschaftliche Teilhabe des Bürgertums. Das Vereinswesen feierte eine Renaissance. Was heute wenig spektakulär klingt, war zur Regierungszeit Metternichs aufsehenerregend. Zwischen dem Beginn der Napoleonischen Kriege mit dem revolutionären Frankreich 1797 und dem Wiener Kongress waren Vereine allgemein verboten gewesen. Wer auf sich hielt, trat nun einer dieser neuartigen Gesellschaften bei. "Innsbruck has a music society, an agricultural society and a mining and geological society." stand etwa im Reiseführer Beda Webers wie ein Qualitätssiegel für die Stadt zu lesen. Es galt das tugendhafte Miteinander zum Wohl der weniger Begüterten und die Erziehung der Massen mit dem Treiben in den Vereinen zu forcieren. Wissenschaft, Literatur, Theater und Musik, aber auch Initiativen wie der Innsbruck Beautification Association, but also practical institutions such as the voluntary fire brigade established themselves as pillars of a previously unknown civil society. One of the first associations to be formed was the Innsbruck Music Society, from which the Tyrolean State Conservatory emerged. In keeping with the spirit of the times, men and women were not members of the same organisations. Women were mainly involved in charitable organisations such as the Women's association for the promotion of infant care centres and female industrial schools. Female participation in the political discourse was not desired.

In addition to Christian charity, a thirst for recognition and prestige were probably also major incentives for members to get involved in the clubs. People met to see and be seen. Good deeds, demonstrating education and leading a virtuous life were then, as now, the best PR for oneself.

Club life also served as entertainment on long evenings without electric light, television and the internet. Students, civil servants, members of the lower nobility and academics met in the pubs and coffee houses to exchange ideas. This was not only about highly intellectual and abstract matters, but also about profane realpolitik such as the suspension of internal tariffs, which made people's lives unnecessarily expensive. Culturally, the bourgeois educated elite in the Romantic and Biedermeier periods discovered the cultural escape into an intact past for themselves. After decades of political confusion, war and hardship, people wanted a distraction from the recent past, just as they did after 1945. Antiquity and its thinkers celebrated a second renaissance in Innsbruck, as in the rest of Europe. Romantic thinkers of the 18th and early 19th centuries such as Winckelmann, Lessing and Hegel were influential. The Greeks were „Noble simplicity and quiet greatness" attested. Goethe wanted the "Search the land of the Greeks with your soul" and travelled to Italy in search of his longing for the good, pre-Christian times in which the people of the Golden Age cultivated an informal relationship with their gods. Roman Stoic virtues were transported into the modern age as role models and formed the basis for bourgeois frugality and patriotism, which became very fashionable. Philologists combed through the texts of ancient writers and philosophers and conveyed a pleasing "Best of" into the 19th century. Columns, sphinxes, busts and statues with classical proportions adorned palaces, administrative buildings and museums such as the Ferdinandeum. Students and intellectuals such as the Briton Lord Byron were so inspired by the Panhellenism and the idea of nationalism that they risked their lives in the Greek struggle for independence against the Ottoman Empire. After the end of the Holy Roman Empire, Pan-Germanism became the political fashion of the liberal bourgeoisie in Innsbruck.

Kanzler Clemens von Metternichs (1773 – 1859) Polizeistaat hielt diese gesellschaftlichen Regungen lange Zeit unter Kontrolle. Zeitungen, Flugblätter, Schriften mussten sich an die Vorgaben der strengen Zensur anpassen oder im Untergrund verbreitet werden. Autoren wie Hermann von Gilm (1812 – 1864) und Johann Senn (1792 – 1857), an beide erinnern heute Straßen in Innsbruck, verbreiteten in Tirol anonym politisch motivierte Literatur. Der vielleicht bekannteste Public Intellectual des Vormärz war wahrscheinlich Adolf Pichler (1819 – 1900), dem bereits kurz nach seinem Ableben unter gänzlich anderen Vorzeichen in der Stadtpolitik der späten Monarchie ein Denkmal gewidmet wurde und nach dem heute das Bundesrealgymnasium am gleichnamigen Platz gewidmet ist. Bücher und Vereine standen unter Generalverdacht. Der Innsbrucker Musikverein lehrte im Rahmen seiner Ausbildung auch die Deklamation, das Vortragen von Texten, Musik und Reden, die Inhalte wurden von der Obrigkeit streng überwacht. Alle Arten von Vereinen wie die Innsbrucker Liedertafel and student fraternities, even the members of the Ferdinandeum were spied on. The social movements forming in the working-class neighbourhoods were particularly targeted by Metternich's secret police. Despite their demonstrative loyalty to the emperor, the marksmen were also on the list of institutions to be observed. They were considered too rebellious, not only towards foreign powers, but also towards the Viennese central government. The mix of Greater German nationalist ideas and Tyrolean patriotism presented with the pathos of Romanticism seems strangely harmless today, but was neither comfortable nor acceptable to the Metternich state apparatus.

However, political activism was a marginal phenomenon that only occupied a small elite. After the mines and salt works had lost their profitability in the 17th century and transit lost its economic importance due to the new trade routes across the Atlantic, Tyrol had become a poor region. The Napoleonic Wars had raged for over 20 years. The year 1809 went down as Tyrolean heroic age in the historiography of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the consequences of heroism were barely highlighted. Although the Austrian Empire was one of the victorious powers after the Congress of Vienna, its economic situation was miserable. As after the world wars of the 20th century, many men had not returned home during the coalition wars. The university, which drew young aristocrats into the city's economic cycle, was not reopened until 1826. Unlike industrial locations in Bohemia, Moravia, Prussia or England, the hard-to-reach city in the Alps was only just beginning to develop into a modern labour market. Tourism was also still in its infancy and was not a Cash Cow. It is no wonder that hardly any buildings in the Biedermeier style have survived in Innsbruck. And then there was a volcano on the other side of the world that had an undue influence on the fate of the city of Innsbruck. In 1815, Tambora erupted in Indonesia and sent a huge cloud of dust, sulphur and ash around the world. In 1816 Year without summer into history. All over Europe, there were freak weather conditions, floods and failed harvests. The Alps, an already difficult part of the world to farm, were not exempt from this.

The economic upheavals and price increases led to hardship and misery, especially among the poorer sections of the population. In the 19th century, caring for the poor was a task for the communities, usually with the support of wealthy citizens as patrons with the idea of Christian charity. The state, the community, the church and the newly emerging civil society in the form of associations began to look after the welfare of the poorest sections of the population. Charity concerts, collections and appeals for donations were organised. The measures often contained an enlightened component, even if the means to an end seem strange and alien today. In Innsbruck, for example, a begging ordinance came into force that banned dispossessed people from marrying. Almost 1000 citizens were categorised as alms recipients and beggars.

As the need grew and the city coffers became emptier, Innsbruck came up with an innovation that was to last for over 100 years: The New Year's apology card. Even back then, it was customary to visit relatives on the first day of the year to give each other a Happy New Year to make a wish. It was also customary for needy families and beggars to knock on the doors of wealthy citizens to ask for alms at New Year. The introduction of the New Year's relief card killed several birds with one stone. The buyers of the card were able to institutionalise and support their poorer members in a regulated way, similar to the way street newspapers are bought today. Twenty is possible. At the same time, the New Year's apology card served as a way of avoiding the unpopular obligatory visits to relatives. Those who hung the card on their front door also signalled to those in need that no further requests for alms were necessary, as they had already paid their contribution. Last but not least, the noble donors were also favourably mentioned in the media so that everyone could see how much they cared for their less fortunate fellow human beings in the name of charity.

The New Year's apology cards were a complete success. At their premiere at the turn of the year from 1819 to 1820, 600 were sold. Many communities adopted the Innsbruck recipe. In the magazine "The Imperial and Royal Privileged Bothe of and for Tyrol and Vorarlberg", the proceeds for Bruneck, Bozen, Trient, Rovereto, Schwaz, Imst, Bregenz and Innsbruck were published on 12 February. Other institutions such as fire brigades and associations also adopted the well-functioning custom to raise funds for their cause. The construction of the new Höttinger parish church was financed to a large extent from the proceeds of specially issued apology cards in addition to donations. The varied designs ranged from Christian motifs to portraits of well-known personalities, official buildings, new buildings, sights and curiosities. Many of the designs can still be seen in the Innsbruck City Archives.

The year 1848 occupies a mythical place in European history. Innsbruck was not one of the hotspots like Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Milan or Berlin, but even in the “Holy Land” of Tyrol the revolutionary year left its mark. In contrast to the rural surroundings, an enlightened educated bourgeoisie had developed in Innsbruck. Enlightened people no longer wanted to be subjects of a monarch or territorial prince, but citizens with rights and duties in relation to a modern state. Students and members of the liberal professions demanded political participation, freedom of the press and civil rights. Workers demanded better wages and working conditions. Particularly radical liberals and nationalists even questioned the absolute authority of the Church. In March 1848 this socially and politically highly explosive mixture erupted in uprisings and street fighting in many cities. In Innsbruck, some students and professors celebrated the newly granted freedom of the press with a torchlight procession. On the whole, however, the revolution proceeded quietly in the rather leisurely Tyrol. To speak of a spontaneous outburst of emotion or even a revolution would already be an exaggeration: the date of the procession was postponed from 20 to 21 March because of bad weather. There were hardly any anti-Habsburg riots or violent incidents; a stray stone thrown into a Jesuit window was one of the highlights of the Alpine version of the Revolution of 1848. The students even supported the city magistrate in maintaining public order, thereby demonstrating their gratitude to the monarch for the newly granted freedoms and their loyalty.

The initial enthusiasm for change among the bourgeois elites was soon replaced in Innsbruck by a surge of German-national patriotism. On April 6, 1848, the governor of Tyrol led a ceremonial procession in which the German flag was displayed. A German tricolour was also hoisted on the city tower. While students, workers, liberal-national citizens, republicans, supporters of a constitutional monarchy, and Catholic conservatives could not agree on social issues such as press freedom, they shared a common hostility toward the Italian independence movement, which had spread across northern Italy from Piedmont and Milan. Innsbruck students and riflemen, with the support of the imperial army leadership, marched into the Trentino to suppress unrest and uprisings at an early stage. Notable members of this corps included the already elderly Father Haspinger, who had fought alongside Andreas Hofer in 1809, and Adolf Pichler. Johann Nepomuk Mahl-Schedl, a wealthy owner of Büchsenhausen Castle, even equipped his own company and marched over the Brenner Pass to secure the border. However, the war did not remain confined to the southern borders. Innsbruck itself, as the political and economic center of the multinational crown land of Tyrol and home to many Italian speakers, became an arena of the conflict between nationalities. Combined with ample alcohol consumption, anti-Italian sentiment posed a greater threat to public order than the demand for civil liberties. A dispute between a German-speaking craftsman and an Italian-speaking Ladin escalated to such an extent that it nearly triggered a pogrom against the numerous businesses and inns of Italian-speaking Tyroleans.

The relative calm of Innsbruck suited the imperial court in Vienna, which was under pressure. As unrest in the capital continued after March, Emperor Ferdinand fled to Tyrol in May. According to contemporary press reports, he was enthusiastically welcomed by the population.

"“What is the name of the land to which such an honour falls, what is the people that enjoys such trust in these fateful times? Does the peace and security here rest solely on legend from ancient times, or is there also in the present a foundation on which one can build, which the wind cannot blow away and the storm cannot shake? This Alpine land is called Tyrol, do you like it? Yes, the Tyrolean people alone prove, in the midst of a shaken Europe, reverence and loyalty, courage and strength for their hereditary ruling house, while all around rebellion, contradiction, defiance and demands, often even revolt and upheaval rage; Tyrol alone stands firmly without wavering in custom and obedience, in religion, truth and law, while elsewhere insolence and falsehood, madness and passions prevail …”"

In June, a young Franz Joseph—still not yet emperor—also stopped at the Hofburg on his return from the battlefields of northern Italy instead of traveling directly to Vienna. Innsbruck once again became a royal residence, albeit only for one summer. While blood was shed in Vienna, Milan, and Budapest, the imperial family enjoyed rural Tyrolean life. Ferdinand, Franz Karl, his wife Sophie, and Franz Joseph received guests from foreign courts and were driven by carriage to excursion destinations such as Weiherburg, Stefansbrücke, Kranebitten, and even up to Heiligwasser, and went on hikes. This calm did not last long. Ferdinand, considered no longer fit to rule, handed over power under gentle pressure to Franz Joseph I. In July 1848, the first parliamentary session was held in Vienna, and a constitution came into force. However, the monarchy’s willingness to reform soon waned. The new parliament—the Reichsrat—could not pass binding laws, the emperor never attended it, and he did not understand why a monarchy ordained by God needed such a council.

Nevertheless, liberalization continued, especially in cities. Innsbruck was granted the status of a city with its own statute. Municipal law introduced a form of citizenship tied to property or tax payments, granting certain rights. Local voting rights were extended to adult male citizens. Innsbruck politics came to be dominated by a greater German liberal faction of merchants, traders, industrialists, and innkeepers. On June 2, 1848, the first issue of the liberal, pro-German Innsbrucker Zeitung was published. Conservative readers preferred the Volksblatt für Tirol und Vorarlberg, while moderates read the Bothen für Tirol und Vorarlberg. Press freedom, however, was soon restricted again. Censorship was partially reintroduced, and newspapers were not allowed to write against the provincial government, monarchy, or Church.

"Anyone who, by means of printed matter, incites, instigates or attempts to incite others to take action which would bring about the violent separation of a part from the unified state... of the Austrian Empire... or the general Austrian Imperial Diet or the provincial assemblies of the individual crown lands.... Imperial Diet or the Diet of the individual Crown Lands... violently disrupts... shall be punished with severe imprisonment of two to ten years."

After Innsbruck had officially replaced Meran as the provincial capital in 1849 and had thus finally become the political centre of Tyrol, parties began to form. With the establishment of the Catholic-conservative faction and the liberals, a pair of opposing ideas emerged that would shape politics not only until the First World War. Associations of all kinds as political organisations in advance of parties, and newspapers, formed the lines along which society split in all questions of life from the cradle to the grave. From 1868 onwards, the liberal, greater German-oriented party provided the mayor of the city of Innsbruck. The influence of the Church declined in Innsbruck in contrast to the surrounding municipalities. Individualism, capitalism, nationalism and consumption stepped into the breach. New worlds of work, department stores, theatres, cafés and dance halls did not displace religion entirely even in the city, but the weighting shifted as a result of the civil freedoms won in 1848.

The probably most important legal change of 1848 was the land relief patent. In Innsbruck the clergy, especially Wilten Abbey, owned a large part of the agricultural land. The Church and the nobility were exempt from taxes. In 1848/49 feudal lordship and the relationship of subjection were abolished in Austria. Ground rents, tithes and compulsory labour were thus removed. The landowners received one third of the value of their land from the state within the framework of the reform, one third was regarded as tax relief, and one third of the compensation had to be borne by the peasants themselves. They could pay this amount in instalments over twenty years. The after-effects can still be felt today. The descendants of the peasants who were successful at the time enjoy, through inherited land ownership resulting from the 1848 reforms, the fruits of prosperity and also political influence through land sales for housing, leases and compensation payments by public authorities for infrastructure projects. The landowning nobility of the past had to come to terms with the humiliation of taking up bourgeois occupations. The transition from privilege by birth to privileged status within society through financial means, networks and education often succeeded. Many Innsbruck dynasties of academics have their origins in the decades after 1848.

Life also changed for the broader population. The previously unknown phenomenon of leisure time emerged and, together with disposable income available to a greater number of people, fostered hobbies. Civil organisations and associations—from reading circles to choral societies, fire brigades and sports clubs—were founded. The revolutionary year also manifested itself in the cityscape. Parks such as the English Garden at Ambras Castle or the Hofgarten were no longer reserved exclusively for the aristocracy but served citizens as local recreational areas. In St. Nikolaus the Waltherpark was created as a small oasis of calm. One floor above, the first swimming and bathing facility in Tyrol opened at Büchsenhausen Castle; soon afterwards another bath followed in Dreiheiligen. Excursion inns around Innsbruck flourished. Alongside high-end restaurants and hotels, a scene of taverns emerged in which workers and employees could also afford pleasant evenings with theatre, music and dancing.

Innsbrucks Innenstadt wird bis heute von Gebäuden und Denkmälern geprägt, die an die Familie Habsburg erinnern. Unzählige Touristen bewundern die stummen Hinterlassenschaften der Dynastie, die als mindestens ebenso ur-österreichisch gilt wie Schnitzel, Mozartkugeln und Mehlspeisen. Diese Darstellung ist allerdings nicht korrekt, auch wenn die Habsburger die Landesgeschichte über Jahrhunderte mitprägten. Sie waren ein europäisches Herrscherhaus, zu dessen Einflussbereich verschiedenste Territorien gehörten. Am Zenit ihrer Macht waren ihre Mitglieder die Herrscher über ein „Reich, in dem die Sonne nie untergeht“. Durch Kriege und geschickte Heirats- und Machtpolitik saßen sie in verschiedenen Epochen an den Schalthebeln der Macht zwischen Südamerika und der Ukraine. Ob der internationalen Ausrichtung des Hauses Habsburg verwundert es nicht, dass so mancher CEO der Grafschaft Tirol aus dieser Dynastie zumindest am Anfang etwas fremdelte mit der alpinen Provinz und ihren Einwohnern. Einige der Tiroler Landesfürsten hatten weder eine besondere Beziehung zu Tirol noch brachten sie diesem deutschen Land besondere Zuneigung entgegen. Ferdinand I. (1503 – 1564) wurde am spanischen Hof erzogen. Maximilians Enkel Karl V. war in Burgund aufgewachsen. Als er mit 17 Jahren zum ersten Mal spanischen Boden betrat, um das Erbe seiner Mutter Johanna über die Reiche Kastilien und Aragorn anzutreten, sprach er kein Wort spanisch. Als er 1519 zum Deutschen Kaiser gewählt wurde, sprach er kein Wort Deutsch. Es waren auch nicht alle Habsburger glücklich in Innsbruck sein zu „dürfen“. Angeheiratete Prinzen und Prinzessinnen wie Maximilians zweite Frau Bianca Maria Sforza oder Ferdinand II. zweite Frau Anna Caterina Gonzaga strandeten ungefragt nach der Hochzeit in der rauen, deutschsprachigen Bergwelt. Stellt man sich zudem vor, was ein Umzug samt Heirat von Italien nach Tirol zu einem fremden Mann für einen Teenager bedeutet, kann man erahnen, wie schwer das Leben der Prinzessinnen war. Kinder der Aristokratie wurden bis ins 20. Jahrhundert vor allem dazu erzogen, politisch verheiratet zu werden. Widerspruch dagegen gab es keinen. Man mag sich das höfische Leben als prunkvoll vorstellen, Privatsphäre war in all dem Luxus nicht vorgesehen.

Innsbruck repeatedly became a place of destiny for this ruling dynasty. Thanks to its strategically favorable location between Italian cities and German centers such as Augsburg and Regensburg, Innsbruck gained a special status within the empire at the latest after being elevated to a residence city under Emperor Maximilian. Innsbruck experienced its Habsburg heyday when it served as the main residence of the Tyrolean sovereigns. Ferdinand II, Maximilian III, and Leopold V, together with their wives, shaped the city during their reigns. When Sigismund Franz of Habsburg (1630–1665) died childless as the last provincial ruler, Innsbruck also lost its status as a residence city, and Tyrol was governed by a governor. Tyrolean mining had lost much of its importance and no longer required special attention. Shortly thereafter, the Habsburgs lost their possessions in Western Europe, including Spain and Burgundy, which pushed Innsbruck from the center to the periphery of the empire.

Despite this decline in favor and the increasing centralization of government affairs, Tyrol, as a conservative region, generally remained loyal to the dynasty. Even after the period as a residence city, the births of new members of the ruling family were dutifully celebrated with parades and processions; deaths were mourned with memorial masses; and archdukes, kings, and emperors were immortalized in public spaces with statues and paintings. In the nineteenth century, the Jesuit Hartmann Grisar wrote the following about the celebrations marking the birth of Archduke Leopold in 1716:

„But what an imposing sight it was when, as night fell, the Abbot of Wilten held the final religious function in front of St Anne's Column, which had been consecrated by the blood of the country, surrounded by rows of students and the packed crowd; when, by the light of thousands of burning lights and torches, the whole town, together with the studying youth, the hope of the country, implored heaven for a blessing for the Emperor's newborn first son.“

The Habsburgs valued the Nibelung-like loyalty of their alpine subjects. The region’s difficult accessibility made it a perfect refuge in turbulent and crisis-ridden times. Charles V (1500–1558) fled to Innsbruck for a time during a conflict with the Protestant Schmalkaldic League. Ferdinand I (1793–1875) had his family stay in Innsbruck to keep them far from the Ottoman threat in eastern Austria. Shortly before his coronation, Franz Joseph I enjoyed the seclusion of Innsbruck during the turbulent summer of the 1848 revolution together with his brother Maximilian, who was later executed by nationalist insurgents as Emperor of Mexico. A plaque at the Alpine inn Heiligwasser above Igls commemorates the fact that the monarch spent the night there during his ascent of the Patscherkofel. In the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy of the nineteenth century, Innsbruck was the western outpost of a vast empire that extended as far as present-day Ukraine. Franz Joseph I (1830–1916) ruled a multiethnic empire between 1848 and 1916. His neo-absolutist understanding of rule, however, was outdated. Although Austria had had a parliament and a constitution since 1867, the emperor regarded this government as “his.” Ministers were accountable to the emperor, who stood above the government.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the ailing empire began to crumble increasingly. On October 28, 1918, the Republic of Czechoslovakia was proclaimed; on October 29, Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs withdrew from the monarchy. The last emperor, Charles, abdicated on November 11. On November 12, “German-Austria declared itself a democratic republic in which all power emanates from the people.” The Habsburg chapter had come to an end. Even though only very few Austrians today can imagine a monarchy as a form of government, the view of the ruling family remains ambivalent. Despite all the national, economic, and democratic problems that existed in the multiethnic states that— in various forms and configurations—were subject to the Habsburgs, the successor nation-states in some cases proved far less successful at reconciling minority interests and cultural differences within their territories. Since the EU’s eastward enlargement, the Habsburg Monarchy has not infrequently been portrayed by well-meaning historians as a precursor to the European Union. The list of Habsburg legacies in Innsbruck is long. Together with the Catholic Church, the Habsburgs shaped public space through architecture, art, and culture. The Golden Roof, the Imperial Palace, the Triumphal Arch, Ambras Castle, the Leopold Fountain, and many other structures still bear witness today to the presence of what was arguably the most significant ruling dynasty in European history in Innsbruck.