The One With A Lot Of Information About A Cool Cathedral

- June 27, 2018

We're still wandering Vienna! On our way to the cathedral we stopped by a quiet little square that is now a very desirable place to live (it has quiet and parking!). The buildings used to all be part of the old Jesuit church here, but are residences now; the church still stands and is connected to the local University. We also passed Vienna's statue of Gutenberg, to whom I owe most of the childhood I spent reading.

Mural on the wall of the old Jesuit complex

Gutenberg!

Then we went for a tour of Stephansdom, or St. Stephan's Cathedral. It's as big as a soccer field, was originally built in 1147 in the Gothic style, and was restored in the 1600-1700s with Baroque influences. The north tower, however, was never finished due to a lack of money. Mozart is buried there and his kids baptized there, and the archbishop lived right across the square. The Nazi SS actually had headquarters right by our hotel which is very close, so this area was heavily bombed. When the Stephansdom caught fire in 1945, there was no running water nearby so the fire was put out with barrels of wine from the local restaurants! After the war every Austrian state donated money to refinish it, and those states were commemorated. For example, the roof (first picture) has the year 1950 and the coat of arms of both Austria and Vienna because Vienna donated money to fix the roof in 1950. One other fun story before you move on to the pictures: Habsburg royals were buried here in the Spanish style, meaning that their hearts were buried in Augustinerkirche, their bodies in the Capuchin church, and their innards at Stephansdom. Only one (Protestant, deviating from the norm) princess was not buried divided, and the locals joke that she's the only one who won't have to run from church to church come Judgement Day :D

These bread loaf and cloth measures were permanently affixed to the cathedral so people could come check that they weren't being cheated at the market

Intricate pulpit with lots of neat detail

600-year-old local red marble tomb of Friedrich III, a Habsburg and a Holy Roman Emperor. He was the father of the emperor who founded the Vienna Boys Choir, and he had a slogan, A.E.I.O.U. It was a bit of a secret, but in English it translated to either "All the world is subject to Austria" (he had high hopes) or "Austria will exist until the last days of creation."

Dexter particularly enjoyed climbing this masterpiece. He's a fan of Gothic architecture.

In the afternoon we sang a 30-minute concert at Peterskirche. The original structure is said to be the oldest church in Vienna, but new structures were built over old ones and the current version was modeled after St. Peter's in Rome in the 1700s. It looks a bit small from the outside, but the inside is surprisingly lavish and magnificently painted.