The former place center of Heiligenstadt was the Probusgasse, which still has almost completely kept his medieval character. Since Heiligenstadt was regarded as a noble summer resort place in the 19th century and offered even a sulfurous medicinal spring with his bathhouse, numerous rich citizens established themselves here. Also Ludwig van Beethoven lived here for a long time and he wrote here on October 6th, 1802 his Heiligenstädter Testament.
After the first World War the social-democratic town government started more and more to open the noble district for the laboring classes. Karl Ehn, a follower of Otto Wagner, built in the order of the city of Vienna a residential building plant with 1392 apartments, the Karl Marx Hof who almost offered revolutionarily luxurious living possibilities for the proletariat for the time. 1934, when the socialist workers delivered a bitter battle against the austrian-fascistic 'Heimwehr', the Karl-Marx court attained a further fame by the February rebellion. It is the longest coherent residential building of the world with 3.609 feets (4 tramway stops) in which only 20% are built on by the over 1.614.586 ft ² of the area.
Heiligenstadt presents itself despite the well received areas as a modern district today with excellent traffic connection (tramway, high-speed railroad, subway and busses), numerous business shops and Shoppingmalls, e.g. the Q19, which was newly build with 323.000 ft² and for 51million Euro in the prodected building of a former paper mill in October 2005, some of the best restaurants and the famous Viennese 'Heurigen'.
