The Imperial Crypt (Kapuzinergruft)
Why is it significant?
You are standing in front of what is perhaps the plainest church facade in central Vienna: a flat front, a painting above a simple door. Beneath your feet lie around a hundred and fifty Habsburgs, among them twelve emperors and eighteen empresses.
Key Facts
| Place | The Imperial Crypt (Kapuzinergruft) |
|---|---|
| Address | Tegetthoffstraße 2, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.20580, 16.37020 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna's Imperial Heart: The Hofburg, the Habsburg Crypt and Six Centuries of Empire |
| Generated | Generated |
You are standing in front of what is perhaps the plainest church facade in central Vienna: a flat front, a painting above a simple door. Beneath your feet lie around a hundred and fifty Habsburgs, among them twelve emperors and eighteen empresses. The most powerful family in Europe chose to rest with the poorest order of friars.
The crypt was founded by Empress Anna, wife of Emperor Matthias, and its first burials came in the 1630s. It was a deliberate act of humility: the Capuchins took a vow of poverty, and a Habsburg buried among them was saying that before God an emperor is a beggar too. The friars still guard the vault today.
And then there is the ritual at the door. When a Habsburg funeral arrives, a herald knocks and a friar inside asks who seeks entry. The herald recites the dead man's titles, emperor, king, duke, and the answer comes back: we do not know him. He knocks again, with a shorter list, and again is refused. Only the third time, when he announces simply a mortal, sinful human being, does the door open. The ceremony was performed as recently as 2011, for Otto von Habsburg, the eldest son of the last emperor.
Inside, humility gives way rather quickly. The double sarcophagus of Maria Theresa and her husband Franz Stephan is a Baroque bed of bronze, with the couple sitting up, gazing at each other as if they had just woken. Maria Theresa used to come down here to sit beside his coffin after he died in 1765. And one woman lies among the Habsburgs without being one: Countess Fuchs, the empress's beloved governess, given a place of honour by a grateful pupil.
Strangely, many of these bodies are incomplete. For centuries the hearts were taken to one church and the entrails to another, so a single Habsburg could be buried in three places at once. You will meet the hearts very soon. Now walk west along Tegetthoffstraße to Albertinaplatz and climb up onto the old city bastion.