Augustinerkirche: Weddings and Hearts
Why is it significant?
Step into the tall, white Gothic nave and let your eyes adjust. It is a cool, almost severe church, without much gold, and yet for two centuries this was where the Habsburgs said yes. From 1634 the Augustinian church served as the parish church of the imperial court.
Key Facts
| Place | Augustinerkirche: Weddings and Hearts |
|---|---|
| Address | Augustinerstraße 3, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.20560, 16.36800 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna's Imperial Heart: The Hofburg, the Habsburg Crypt and Six Centuries of Empire |
| Generated | Generated |
Step into the tall, white Gothic nave and let your eyes adjust. It is a cool, almost severe church, without much gold, and yet for two centuries this was where the Habsburgs said yes. From 1634 the Augustinian church served as the parish church of the imperial court.
The guest list is extraordinary. Maria Theresa married Franz Stephan of Lorraine here in 1736, a genuine love match by royal standards. In 1770 her daughter Marie Antoinette was married here by proxy to the future Louis XVI, with her brother standing in for the absent groom. In 1810 Napoleon married Marie Louise, daughter of the emperor he had defeated, in the same way. And on the 24th of April 1854 the young Franz Joseph married sixteen-year-old Elisabeth here, under a blaze of candles.
Now look along the aisle for a white marble pyramid with a dark doorway. A procession of mourners is slowly walking into it, a woman carrying an urn, a child, an old man, while a lion sleeps on the steps. It is the tomb that Antonio Canova made for Archduchess Maria Christina, the duke's beloved wife from the Albertina, finished in 1805. She is not even buried inside it. It is pure grief in stone.
Behind a small chapel is the strangest room of all, the Heart Crypt. Here, on shelves, stand fifty-four silver and copper urns, each holding the heart of a Habsburg. Remember the crypt you visited earlier: the bodies went to the Capuchins, the entrails to Saint Stephen's Cathedral, and the hearts came here, to the church of the court. Three funerals for every emperor.
The custom lasted until the nineteenth century, and the last heart arrived in 1878. It sounds macabre, but it was meant tenderly: the heart stayed close to the palace, near the family. Now step out and walk back up to Josefsplatz, where an emperor rides in front of the most beautiful library in Europe.