This beautiful spot, 29km (18 miles) west of Vienna in the heart of the Wienerwald, is best known for the unresolved deaths of Archduke Rudolf, son of Emperor Franz Joseph, and his mistress in 1889. The event, which took place in a hunting lodge (now a Carmelite convent), altered the line of Austro-Hungarian succession. The heir apparent became Franz Joseph's nephew, Archduke Ferdinand, whose murder in Sarajevo sparked World War I. Mayerling, incidentally, is only a small hamlet, not even a village.