To mark International Women’s Day, the ivie app, a free digital city guide from the Vienna Tourist Board, has created a new sightseeing experience dedicated to exceptional female role models.

“7 Great Women, 7 Great Places” tells the story of Vienna as the home and adopted home of women who broke with traditional gender roles. The city guide presents famous figures who paid little heed to the conventions of their time and links them with Viennese places and institutions that are well worth a visit….

1. Piano-making virtuoso

Nannette Streicher, a native German who moved to Vienna with her husband in 1794, built the best pianos of her day. Her most famous customer was none other than Ludwig van Beethoven, who swore by Streicher’s instruments and formed a close friendship with her. The multi-talented piano maker was also an excellent pianist, composer, teacher and writer. Visitors to Vienna can see one of Streicher’s original fortepianos in the Vienna Museum of Technology.

2. Architectural heroine

Vienna-born architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky started to revolutionise a traditionally male dominated field from the 1920s onwards. She was one of the first women to study architecture in Vienna and is regarded as the first female Viennese architect to practise the profession fully. A pioneer in the development of social housing and advocate of the women’s movements for rights and peace, she is also known as the inventor of the modern fitted kitchen. Schütte-Lihotzky’s private apartment, where she lived and worked for three decades, is now a museum and research centre.

3. Hotel legend

The Hotel Sacher, one of the most iconic hotels in Vienna, is inseparably linked with one of the most remarkable Viennese women of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries: Anna Sacher. She was the wife of Eduard Sacher, who died young, and took over the running of the hotel restaurant and business on her own despite stiff resistance. She went on to become a legend in Vienna’s tourism industry and won numerous awards.

4. Stone Age icon

Eleven centimetres tall, world-famous for more than 100 years and an incredible 30,000 years old, the Venus of Willendorf is the oldest depiction of a woman on display in Vienna. The prehistoric sculpture from the Neolithic period, which was excavated in 1908 in the Wachau region north of Vienna, was long interpreted by scientists as a symbol of fertility. The Venus of Willendorf can be found in the Natural History Museum, the home of sculpture and one of the best-known museums in Vienna.

5. Nobel Prize winner

Elfriede Jelinek, born in 194, is the most renowned contemporary Austrian writer and a world-class author. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004 for her work, which has a strong focus on feminist issues. One of the most important venues in Vienna associated with Jelinek’s work is the Burghtheater – the most prestigious theatre in the German-speaking world, where many of her stage plays such as “stecken, Stab und Stangl and “Babel” have been performed.

6. Palace Revolutionary

Empress Elisabeth of Austria, better known as Sisi, was probably the most discussed woman in 19^th century Vienna. And she continues to fascinate people just as much today as she did back then, as recent movies and TV series prove. Sisi despised the strict protocols and restrictive corset of imperial court life, and longed for freedom, which she found on her countless travels and in her artistic and sporting interests. The best place in Vienna to immerse yourself in the life of Sisi is the Sisi Museum Vienna in Hofburg.

7. Pioneering analyst

The address Berggasse 19, and the Sigmund Freud Museum located there, commemorates more than just Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. His famous daughter Anna Freud, who likewise went on the become a pioneering psychoanalyst, also lived there. Her work in the field of child psychoanalysis was particularly ground-breaking, and she also broke down traditional role models and lived with a great deal of autonomy.