Donauraum Wien combines the function of a modern port with the leisure quality of an attractive urban waterfront. Here, international shipping and everyday city life come together, creating spaces for interaction, movement and value creation. The port areas are an integral part of Vienna’s urban landscape. With gastronomy, leisure activities and open access to the water, the port becomes a place where Vienna’s location on the Danube is made visible and tangible.
The history of the Vienna Shipping Center at Reichsbrücke is closely linked to the development of the city on the Danube.
When the long-established Danube Steamship Company (DDSG) relocated its headquarters from the third district, a new location was created at Handelskai 265, intended to carry forward Vienna’s long-standing relationship with the water. In 1981, the Vienna Shipping Center opened its doors – modern for its time and deliberately built where the Danube has always enabled trade, encounters and movement.
The site quickly developed into a defining point along the waterfront: a building that makes the history of Danube shipping tangible while at the same time marking the transition into a new era. Over the decades, it was expanded, modernised and adapted to the needs of a growing passenger shipping sector.
To this day, the Vienna Shipping Center remains a place where tradition and the present come together – visible in a building recognised by many Viennese, and evident in its role as a link between the city and the Danube. For many, it has also gained special recognition through the ORF television series “SOKO Donau”, in which the investigators have their fictional workplace here.
Copyright © 2026 by Wiener Donauraum Länden und Ufer Betriebs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft m.b.H. Handelskai 265, 1020 Vienna, Austria
