The Romans successfully held onto the region until the 5th century when they decided to evacuate and move onto other pastures. The Romans would return 400 years later, however, when Austria was inducted into the renewed Roman Empire of Charlemagne in the 9th century. Later, in 976, Emperor Otto II granted Vienna to the Babenberg family where it prospered. Austria was established as a state in 996. By the late 1100s, Vienna grew to encompass what is now the Inner District and eventually received municipal status. The Habsburg family ruled over Vienna for centuries and it was Rudolf IV of Habsburg, known as The Founder, who made the greatest impact on the city by building St Stephen's Cathedral, the university, and overseeing many popular municipal reforms. Turkish sieges, religious persecutions, and the plague bore down on the Hapsburgs in the ensuing centuries but they remained in control and added the title Holy Roman emperor in the 15th century. By this time, Hungary and Bohemia were also included in the family domain, while Vienna became the imperial residence and the administrative centre of their empire. The mid-1800s saw the people of Vienna revolt unsuccessfully against the ruling Habsburgs and from this time, Emperor Francis Joseph I oversaw Vienna as a modern, capital city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Ringstrasse replaced the old and dated city walls and the city’s suburbs grew at a tremendous rate with the population rising to over two million in 1916 from a mere 400,000 in 1850. Hundreds of thousands of Jews and Czechs made Vienna their home during this period of expansion. The Allies occupied Vienna for a decade after WWII from where the city became capital of a neutral Austrian Republic. Vienna became one of the world headquarters of the United Nations in 1980 and in 1995 Austria joined the European Union. The country celebrated its 1,000th anniversary in 1996 with Vienna being the focus, and the city was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001. Millions of people visit Vienna today to learn about the ruling Habsburgs and the city’s famous notables, including Dr Sigmund Freud and Johann Strauss. Other noted composers born here include: Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, and Brahms. | 
