Even the most casual visitor to Vienna can’t help but be bombarded by the city’s Mozart-industrial complex.

Mozart’s face peers out from the wrappers of ubiquitous chocolate-covered candies called Mozart Kugeln, grand cafes offer Mozart tortes, and souvenir shops sell Mozart key chains, stuffed Mozarts, and even Mozart rubber duckies. Hawkers outside major sights aren’t pushing hop-on, hop-off bus tours, but tickets to touristy concerts dominated by Strauss waltzes and, yes, the music of Mozart.

You can’t help but wonder: What about Beethoven?

Don’t get me wrong. I love Mozart, and it’s charming to see the city where he spent the last decade of his life celebrating him with so much kitsch. But Beethoven spent his last 35 years there, and it was in Vienna that he wrote or premiered most of his major works — including all nine symphonies — and changed many of our ideas about music, art and genius. Yet outside the loftier precincts of the city’s museums and concert halls, he is far less visible.

But why? Beethoven is one of the most-recognizable, most-performed composers in the world. His music, and the story of how he fought off despair as he lost his hearing and composed masterpiece after masterpiece, still inspires. But he could be a notoriously difficult man. And if the modern Mozart myth got a boost from the Oscar-winning 1984 film “Amadeus,” the Beethoven biopic that followed, “Immortal Beloved,” failed to ignite in the same way. The most successful recent Beethoven film? That comedy about a St. Bernard.