Even though today was Sunday it was extra holy for me. I attended mass for the first time in awhile! (OK, you must have heard the thunder and lightning!).
The church was called the Augustinian Church and was where the Habsburg all got married. The 11 AM Mass is really like a concert since an orchestra accompanies the choir and the music was just beautiful. Then after the service if you want you get to go down stairs and see the crypt. OK, I’m not making this up but 54 of the Habsburg’s hearts are in urns in this crypt under the church. I even included a pic. The earliest date is from 1618 and the last heart is Franz Joseph’s father who died in 1878. Creepy! So I got a free concert and got to see the Royal Hearts!
I decided since it was Sunday I’d visit several of the churches so I went inside that massive St Stephen’s Cathedral. It was very impressive but it was somewhat dark inside so the pictures didn’t come out great. There was a picture there with a lot of people around it and lots of candles called Maria Pocs Icon (Potscher Madonna). The picture of Mary and baby Jesus was brought to the church from a Hungarian village where it is said that it wept real tears back in 1697 as the Turks were threatening Central Europe.
I then took a break from the churches and did sort of a joy ride on a trolley car around what they call their “Ring Road”. It’s this massive road (what we’d call a Beltway) that circles the entire city. Rick Steves put together this tour telling you where to look for different landmarks and when to hop off and explore. So I just followed that and admired all the great architecture of the buildings. In the order I included the pics I believe it’s as follows:
The one with the statue in front is another portion of the Habsburg’s Palace.
The one with the 5 spires that looks like Westminster Abbey is actually their Town Hall! Pretty elaborate building. Loved that they had a small carnival going on in front of it.
The next (with a bunch of statues on top) is Austria’s National Theater (The Burg Theater). The locals brag it’s the “leading theater in the German speaking world”.
Next with sort of a black and grey top is the University of Vienna. Established in 1365, it’s considered the oldest continuously operating university in the German speaking world.
The next one with the two spires and the park in front with people throwing frisbees (the pic shows the frisbee in mid-air!) is a “votive Church” or a church built to fulfill a vow in thanks for God’s help. In this case, it was to give thanks when an 1853 assassination attempt on Emperor Franz Joseph failed.
My last stop was to what I thought was the most architecturally stunning of them all and that was the huge one with the water in front called St Charles Church. This too is a “votive Church”. During the plague of 1713, Emperor Charles VI vowed to have a church built in honor of the saint of plague suffers who is St Charles Borromeo. When the plague ended in 1714 he had it built and named it St Charles. I toured this church and the cool thing is they are restoring the ceiling frescoes so they allow people to ride an elevator up to the top of the scaffolding in the rotunda and see the fresco first hand. It is amazing and I included a picture of a small portion of it. The man at the bottom in the red cape with a cross on it is St Charles asking God for mercy from the plague.
Well that was one holy day for me! Hope yours was a good one!
Jeff
The Wandering Italian 