Fleischmarkt, the Greek Church and the Griechenbeisl
Why is it significant?
Stop in front of the church with the dazzling facade of red brick and gold, and then turn to the low, ivy-covered inn beside it at the corner of Griechengasse. Two buildings, one street, and between them a story of merchants, plague and a drunk bagpiper.
Key Facts
| Place | Fleischmarkt, the Greek Church and the Griechenbeisl |
|---|---|
| Address | Fleischmarkt 11, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.21070, 16.37730 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna's Old Town Lanes: Stephansdom, Roman Stones and Medieval Legends |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop in front of the church with the dazzling facade of red brick and gold, and then turn to the low, ivy-covered inn beside it at the corner of Griechengasse. Two buildings, one street, and between them a story of merchants, plague and a drunk bagpiper.
Fleischmarkt means meat market, and butchers worked here in the Middle Ages. In the eighteenth century the street became the home of Greek and other Orthodox merchants from the Ottoman Empire, who traded wool, cotton and spices between the Balkans and Central Europe. Their Church of the Holy Trinity was given its splendid Byzantine-style facade in the 1850s by Theophil Hansen, the Danish architect who later built the Austrian Parliament.
The inn next door is the Griechenbeisl, one of the oldest inns in Vienna, first mentioned in the fifteenth century. And here begins the legend of Lieber Augustin. During the plague of 1679, the story goes, a bagpiper and balladeer called Augustin drank too much one night and fell asleep in the gutter. The men collecting the dead took him for a corpse and threw him into a plague pit full of bodies.
He woke up the next morning, still drunk, among the dead, and started playing his bagpipes until someone pulled him out. And, the legend insists, he never caught the plague. Viennese have explained it ever since by the amount of alcohol in his blood. The song O du lieber Augustin, everything is gone, is still sung by children all over the German-speaking world.
Look through the grating near the entrance of the inn: down in a pit you will see a figure of Augustin himself, with his bagpipes, surrounded by coins thrown in for luck. Inside, the inn proudly shows a room whose walls carry signatures of famous guests; which ones are genuine is part of the fun. Now walk south through Köllnerhofgasse and Grashofgasse into a hidden courtyard that belongs to a monastery out in the Vienna Woods.