Autumn in Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark – when the old trees begin their finest season and the evening walk turns into an event.
There are people who consider autumn the worst of the seasons. They do not know Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark in October. When the plane trees and the oaks change colour, when the light flattens and everything settles into a warm amber tone, this park is one of the most beautiful places in Vienna.
„Autumn slows things down. Not because it is tired. It shows everything that is there – the luminous and the passing – and lets both stand side by side.“
The colours of the old trees
In autumn the Schlosspark is a colour laboratory. The plane trees turn yellow, the oaks deep brown and rust red, the white willows lemon. The giant sequoias – a quiet presence all year round – take on a dignity in the autumn light that is hard to put into words. Under the trees the ground lies covered in leaves that rustle, and that sound belongs to this season alone. You could not mistake it for another.
Photographers know that the first and the last hour of the day are worth gold here – in autumn, literally. The light comes in at an angle through the crowns, catches in the leaves, throws long shadows across the paths. You need no talent for photography. You only need to be here at the right time.
A morning walk in fog
On some autumn mornings fog sits over the park. Not thick, not impenetrable, but enough to turn the treetops into something unreal and make the paths longer. The quiet on mornings like that is different. Heavier, fuller, with a smell of wet earth and wet leaves that goes straight into childhood memory without asking first.
It is exactly this quality of autumn that is rare in the city and available here, two minutes from Das Winzer, every day.
The Vienna Woods in October
Go further in autumn – through the park, up the slopes into the Vienna Woods – and you get a spectacle of colour almost too wide to take in. The forest glows. Beech, birch, larch – every species in its own colour, the whole a mosaic that shifts with every step. The mushroom hunters are out, the walkers, the dog owners – and still everyone finds their own quiet path.
Back into the warmth
After the walk the Grätzl is waiting, with everything it has to offer. Autumn in Pötzleinsdorf is not a goodbye. It is settling into a more quiet season of the year.
