Viennese Giant Ferris Wheel

This guide to the Wiener Riesenrad in Vienna opens on the balcony scene from the 1949 film The Third Man, where Orson Welles's Harry Lime looks down at the tiny people below and delivers a line he made up on the spot. It circles back to the English lieutenant who built the wheel in 1897 to mark the emperor's golden jubilee, and to the years it stood unwanted and nearly demolished. Listen for how close Vienna came to tearing it down.