Pictures of Vienna

Not really much point in a clever title for this one, and very little medieval justification either. Given that, I’ve stuck most of the pictures behind a cut, with only the first one as a taster. It’s a beautiful city, mind, and I’d seriously consider taking a job there if one opened up. After all, they pretty much originated my style of charter work round here… But, almost all of Vienna’s buildings appear to be four- or five-storey nineteenth century terraces, of considerable grandeur but also uniformity. So, though the statuary is exceptional, the streets all look more or less like this:

A main street in Vienna with a statue whose name I've forgotten

This is, I was told, because when it was finally decided that Vienna (which is, I realised to my shame, the furthest east I’ve ever been) was safe from the Turks, the city wall was taken down and in the resultant open space a huge building programme was initiated to put in all the impressive civic buildings and patriotic necessities like museums and theatres and government halls that the old city had been too cramped for, as befitted the Habsburg capital. Of course this importance and prosperity peaked in about 1910; as a result Vienna must be one of the very few cities in Europe which is smaller now than it was then. So an awful lot of the city is this new build, which though spread over most of a century is still quite consistent. However, older buildings still exist in the city centre. So although the conference dinner was at one of the ‘new’ bits, the Rathaus:

Vienna Rathaus

the actual conference was in the Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, which is older and looks like this from outside:

Frontage of the Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

That’s nothing to the inside though. Just across from the conference room we passed a door within which lay this:

Interior of the old lecture hall in the ÖAW

This used to be a lecture hall, and is still occasionally used as such; there was a huge projector screen at the front hall which completely spoiled the effect that way. But really, in this room, who’d be looking at the front anyway? Your eyes would keep straying up…

View of ceiling above the lectern in the ÖAW's old lecture hall

and the poor lecturer would have to face the fact that whatever he did, he’d be the least interesting thing in the room. So they put us somewhere less interesting…

I had enough spare time that I really should have been able to do some cultural tourism as well as just hearing about it. Unfortunately, various emotional misfortunes, allied and much enhanced by it being too hot to sleep well in my hotel room, meant that by the time this time came around, I was shattered and defeated. So although I did wander around, I didn’t have the energy or will to do the full-on museum thing, and you can tell that I was not at my best because in finding the famous Ankeruhr…

which is, at its left end in the picture, attached to a building that claims to be on the site of the house of the Roman camp commandant of old Vindobona, I thought this must be the Roman ruin that my map mentioned, went “humph” and wandered off in a different direction, whereas if I’d stayed on the same street I might not, apparently, have missed the home of this:

Digitally reconstructed Roman fort gateway, Römermuseum, Vienna

which is a bit annoying. Seeing the Ankeruhr go through one of its little animated sequences didn’t quite make up for it.

Anyway, there is one quite obvious medieval lump of Vienna, but before I get to it, let me first notify Jeff Sypeck and Matt Gabriele among others that I also found Charlemagne! Here he is:

Fresco of Charlemagne founding St Peter's Vienna

That’s him with the sword and the churchmen bowing before him, I imagine you recognised him. And in case you should, or anybody should, find it useful for demonstration of how the guy’s legacy is stamped over Europe, there’s a full-size version linked underneath that picture. It’s on the side of the now rather-less-medieval Peterskirche – here it is in situ:

St Peter's Vienna

Now there isn’t much of a shortage of churches in most medieval cities, but you’d think that would do for a little distance. Actually it’s within about four hundred yards of the serious one, and the genuinely medieval content of the post, the Stephansdom, which was where I ate my lunch each day while the horse-and-four tourist traps (do you see what I did there?) came and went. It’s an incredible building, and one of those cases where trying to pin it to a century is futile because it took most of one to build, though the significant ones seem to be fourteenth to fifteenth. Let me start with the inside, which gives you an idea especially when you compare it to the slightly later but also less showy Santa Eulàlia de Barcelona, up till now holder of my “sheer Gothic excess” title:

Interior view from the end of the nave of the Stephansdom, Vienna

The outside is rather more stunning, but presents a photographer’s dilemma. All the buildings in central Vienna, really all, are quite tall. The streets are broad, but not so much that one can really get much of a shot at any of their architectural occupants. When that occupant is as huge as the Stephansdom you can’t even take it all in with your own eyes, let alone a camera. So this assemblage of bits is only flavour rather than a whole meal:

Roof of the nave of the Stephansdom, Vienna

Side view of the Stephansdom, showing the chancel and the north tower, south tower in the background

South tower of the Stephansdom, Vienna, a mere 450 ft tall

The chancel of the Stephansdom and its roof

You see, it’s all too much. But the powers-that-be in Vienna (I suppose, the Existentherrschaften?) have clearly realised this, and so that you can actually get some sense of what you are looking at, have created a miniature metal replica out the side, and that gives you some sense of what someone in the fifteenth century, when this thing would have stood out for miles over a sea of single- or two-storey townhouses and the markets and other churches, and dominated its surroundings as its makers intended, might have seen. But really, I couldn’t help feeling that once the Stephansdom was completed, there was really nothing more the Middle Ages could do and they might as well move on to the Renaissance now. I have no intention of doing so myself, but I think that model is a pretty good place to end this post:

Model of the Stephansdom in the court before it