Tulln an der Donau is a municipality in Austria with 16,230
inhabitants (as of January 1, 2020) and the district capital of the
district of the same name in the federal state of Lower Austria.
Lying in the middle of market gardens and with numerous
discounts across the city, Tulln is also known as the garden city.
The municipality of Tulln is located in the Tullnerfeld, which
is bordered by the Vienna Woods in the south and the Wagram in the
north. The municipal area has an area of 72 km² and spreads on
both sides of the Danube, which flows through the area over a length
of around five kilometers. The built-up part of the city is mainly
south of the Danube. The city is bordered by two streams. The Große
Tulln flows into the west and the Kleine Tulln into the east into
two branches of the Danube. The city is 180 m above sea level. The
area around the city, like the entire Tullnerfeld, is completely
flat terrain, which is only slightly undulating where the arms of
the Danube once pushed into the country. Tulln is about 40
kilometers from the federal capital Vienna.
Tulln is one of the oldest cities in Austria. The name
Tulln is said to come from the Celtic, but this theory cannot be
confirmed. Settled in pre-Roman times, it became the Roman riding
fort Comagena, or Comagenis, also a base of the Roman Danube
flotilla in the first half of the first century after Christ. In the
last years of Roman rule, reports of a visit by St. Severin and the
wonderful rescue of the city from the barbarians
After the
song of the Nibelungs, the king of the Huns received Etzel
Siegfried's widow Kriemhilde in Tulln, an event to which a memorial
in the form of a fountain was dedicated in 2005. Already at the end
of the 8th century Tulln was named as a city (Comagenis civitas).
After the final conquest of the Avar Empire by the Frankish Emperor
Charlemagne in 803, the securing and settlement of the former Roman
cavalry fort began. The resulting place was now in the area of the
Baierischen Ostland. In 859 Tulln was first mentioned in a document
with the name Tullina. During the Carolingian era, the court and
seat of Count Ratpot, Tulln gained great importance as a residence
and trading center on the Danube during the time of the Babenberg
margraves, so that it was designated as the capital of the country.
In gratitude for his victory over the Bohemian King Ottokar and the
rescue from danger of death, in which his son Albrecht von
Löwenstein-Schenkenberg had participated, Rudolf I of Habsburg
donated the Dominican convent Tulln, which is no longer preserved,
on August 31, 1280. It remained his only monastery foundation. On
November 11, 1301, the Schenkenberg giver (see Schenkenberg Castle
ruins, Canton Aargau, Switzerland) gave the monastery a courtyard
and accessories in Tulln for the salvation of her deceased husband
Wilhelm, her daughter Agnes and granddaughter Gertrud. Tulln lost
its primacy due to the upswing in Vienna and a series of heavy
burdens (encroachment of the Danube, relocation of trade routes,
large fires, armed tribulations, Turkish invasions, the Thirty
Years' War, French invasion). In 1683, Tulln served as a meeting
point for the relief army of the Holy Roman Empire before the battle
of the Kahlenberg during the Second Turkish siege of Vienna.
The city walls were torn down from 1861. Tulln became the seat of
the district administration in 1892.
A new upswing began in
the 19th century (Danube bridge, construction of the
Franz-Josefs-Bahn, district administration) and in the 20th century
(schools: first high school in 1932, industry: sugar factory in
1936). In 1986 Tulln applied for the state capital, but St. Pölten
was selected.