Vienna, a city known for its Christmas markets and New Year’s concert, is reducing public lighting amid rising energy prices.
“There will be no Christmas lights on the Ring this year,” city spokeswoman Roberta Kraft told AFP.
And the lights at the Christmas market on the Rathausplatz would only be switched on at night and not, as in previous years, at dusk “every day on average about an hour later”. She said.
City authorities said they didn’t calculate exactly how much they would save, but the move comes after energy prices have skyrocketed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its response to Western sanctions.
Last Friday, the Austrian Energy Agency announced that its electricity price index for September rose by more than 256 percent year-on-year.
With its nine million inhabitants, Austria is heavily dependent on tourism and the celebrations at the end of the year are an important economic driver.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic brought international travel to a standstill, more than four million people visited Vienna’s famous Christmas markets in 2019.
In 2021, from November 12th to the beginning of January, around 30 Viennese shopping streets were illuminated seven hours a day.
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