Karlskirche: An Emperor's Plague Vow
Why is it significant?
Walk to the edge of the long pool and let the church fill your view: a Greek temple portico, a huge oval dome of green copper, and on either side a giant column covered in spiralling reliefs, like something carried off from ancient Rome. It should not work. Somehow, it does.
Key Facts
| Place | Karlskirche: An Emperor's Plague Vow |
|---|---|
| Address | Kreuzherrengasse 1, 1040 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.19830, 16.37190 |
| Part of Walk | Gold, Rebels and The Kiss: Vienna from the Secession to the Belvedere |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk to the edge of the long pool and let the church fill your view: a Greek temple portico, a huge oval dome of green copper, and on either side a giant column covered in spiralling reliefs, like something carried off from ancient Rome. It should not work. Somehow, it does.
This church was born of fear. In 1713 the plague came back to Vienna and killed thousands. Emperor Charles VI made a vow: if the city was spared, he would build a church to Saint Charles Borromeo, the archbishop of Milan who had nursed the sick during a plague two centuries earlier. The epidemic ended, and the emperor kept his word. Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach designed it, and when he died in 1723 his son Joseph Emanuel finished the work in 1737.
Now look again at those columns, because they are a political message in stone. They quote Trajan's Column in Rome, and they also recall the Pillars of Hercules at Gibraltar, the old symbol of the Spanish crown. Charles had fought for years to become king of Spain and lost, and here he still put the pillars on his church. The spiral reliefs tell the life of the saint, but the whole facade says: Rome, Spain, the world... all of it belongs to the house of Habsburg.
Inside, the oval dome is painted by Johann Michael Rottmayr with a swirl of saints and clouds rising towards heaven. And out here, in the water, sits something no emperor could have imagined: a bronze by the English sculptor Henry Moore, Hill Arches, placed in the pool in 1978. Smooth, organic, almost like bones polished by the sea, it is in conversation with the Baroque church behind it.
On your left is the Wien Museum, the museum of the city's own history, which reopened in December 2023 after years of rebuilding, with a new floor floating on top of its 1959 building. Among its treasures are works by Klimt and Schiele, and Klimt's portrait of Emilie Flöge, the woman at his side for most of his life. Now leave the square to the east, along the side of the park, until you hear a fountain roaring.