Cathedral Curiosities History Lines St. Stephen’s
Visitors seem well-versed in the lore of the Stephansdom. They know roughly where and what it is: a 900-year-old cathedral in the city centre dedicated to the first Christian martyr. But all too many make a beeline for the interior. In so doing they miss some of the building’s more curious features. A pagan [...]
Pratercottage – Secret Suburb Downtown
On a thin strip of land, sandwiched between the Prater greenery and the Danube Canal, is a unique neighbourhood, unknown, even to many Viennese. In the late 19th century, well-heeled citizens built free-standing English-style “Cottages” (Kottedsch, in Wienerisch), in contrast to the hefty Gründerzeit apartment buildings in the rest of town. To this day the [...]
Siebensternviertel: Community by Design
In early 20th-century Vienna, Secession artists met in the coffeehouses like Sperl or Café Museum near Karlsplatz; in the early 21st century, Vienna’s artistic set can be found in the coffeehouses of the Siebensternviertel. The neighbourhood had me seriously (for about five minutes) considering chopping my long hair to a face-framing bob like the ones [...]
Good Living in Gasometer
In 1962, in the district of Hietzing, Vienna’s last gas street lamp was extinguished. It’s still there today outside the local museum, a small testimony to the great network of gas pipes laid across the city in the late 19th century. The gas that lit it came from the Simmering Gas Works, which in 2001 [...]
Favoriten: Migrants and More
Since last Dec., Vienna’s 10th District of Favoriten has once again been connected to the wider world, as the new Hauptbahnhof at Wiedner Gürtel opened its first section, and thousands of commuters and visitors flooded through the new station, easily recognisable from a distance by its dramatic, diamond-shaped roof. Ever since construction began in 2010, [...]
Monstrous Monuments: Vienna’s Giant Anti-Aircraft Towers
On 9 April 1938, Adolf Hitler stood before an audience of 5,000 in the vast hall of the Nordwestbahn train station. He spoke of their city, just absorbed into the Third Reich, as a pearl in need of a worthy setting. Few could have known that setting would be a noose of concrete anti-aircraft towers [...]
The Two Faces of Vienna’s Bermuda Triangle
There may be no place in Vienna that does more of a transformation when the sun goes down than this super-central corner of the 1st District. Ranging up the hill from Morzinplatz, next to Schwedenplatz, along Franz-Josefs-Kai on the Danube Canal, the area encompasses a handful of small streets and stairways up to the Hoher [...]
Forgotten Armenian Treasures
There is nothing special about Mechitaristengasse in the 7th District, indeed few people seem aware of its existence. But look again at the door at No. 4, adorned with a sculpted bishop’s mitre. It marks the entrance to the Mekhitarist Armenian Monastery, one of Vienna’s least-known places of worship. Venice to Vienna It’s always [...]
Weißgerberviertel: Strolling Through the Centuries
Urban waterfronts are hard to find in Vienna. The Kaisermühlen section of the 22nd District immediately springs to mind, but it’s the downtown Weißgerberviertel that boasts a richer (even violent) history, hundreds of years worth of buildings and pockets of interesting storefronts that just can’t be found in the outer districts. The No. 1 tram [...]
