Votivkirche
Why is it significant?
Two openwork spires shoot up nearly a hundred metres from the far side of the park, pale stone carved like lace. The Votivkirche looks like a medieval cathedral from France or the Rhineland, but every stone of it was laid in the nineteenth century, and the reason it exists is a knife.
Key Facts
| Place | Votivkirche |
|---|---|
| Address | Rooseveltplatz, 1090 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.21540, 16.35910 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna's Ringstrasse: The Grand Boulevard That Replaced the City Walls |
| Generated | Generated |
Two openwork spires shoot up nearly a hundred metres from the far side of the park, pale stone carved like lace. The Votivkirche looks like a medieval cathedral from France or the Rhineland, but every stone of it was laid in the nineteenth century, and the reason it exists is a knife.
On 18 February 1853 the 22-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph was walking on the city walls when a Hungarian journeyman tailor, János Libényi, attacked him from behind, furious at the crushing of the Hungarian revolution of 1848. The blade struck the back of the emperor's neck, but the stiff high collar of his uniform took much of the blow. An officer and a passing Viennese butcher overpowered the attacker, who was later hanged.
The emperor's younger brother, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, called for a church of thanksgiving, a votive church, and some 300,000 people across the empire gave money. The competition was won by Heinrich von Ferstel, who was not yet thirty, the same Ferstel who would later build the university. The foundation stone was laid in 1856, and the church was consecrated in 1879, on the silver wedding anniversary of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth.
Ferdinand Maximilian's own story ended far away. He accepted the crown of Mexico and was executed by a firing squad there in 1867, twelve years before the church he had campaigned for was finished. Inside, among the side chapels, lies a much older Viennese hero: the Renaissance tomb of Count Niklas Salm, who commanded the defence of the city during the first Ottoman siege of 1529.
The church was begun on the open glacis before the Ring even existed, one of the first great buildings of the new Vienna, and its spires set the height limit for everything around it. Now turn back towards the old city and walk down to one of the last surviving stretches of the walls, where Beethoven once rented rooms with a view.