Salesianerinnenkirche: The Widowed Empress
Why is it significant?
Stop in front of the convent wall and look up at the dome rising behind it, green and solid, with a lantern on top. Most people walking to the Belvedere pass it without a glance. It belongs to a church founded by a grieving empress.
Key Facts
| Place | Salesianerinnenkirche: The Widowed Empress |
|---|---|
| Address | Rennweg 10, 1030 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.19590, 16.38170 |
| Part of Walk | Gold, Rebels and The Kiss: Vienna from the Secession to the Belvedere |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop in front of the convent wall and look up at the dome rising behind it, green and solid, with a lantern on top. Most people walking to the Belvedere pass it without a glance. It belongs to a church founded by a grieving empress.
In 1711 Emperor Joseph I, only thirty-two years old, died of smallpox. His widow, Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick, had borne him daughters but no surviving son, and so the throne passed to his younger brother, Charles VI... the emperor of the Karlskirche. The widow stepped back from the court. She did not want a palace. She wanted a convent.
In 1717 she founded this house for the Salesian Sisters, the nuns of the Order of the Visitation, whose task was to educate girls from noble families. The church was built in the following years by the architect Donato Felice d'Allio, and the dome inside was painted by the Venetian Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini. Wilhelmine Amalia lived here among the sisters, and when she died in 1742 she was buried here too, not with her husband's family.
Think about the neighbourhood she chose. On one side, the summer palace of Prince Eugene, the most glamorous house in Vienna, with its menagerie, its parties and its gardens. On the other, behind this wall, a world of silence, prayer and lessons in French and needlework. Two great Baroque projects went up side by side in the very same years, one for glory and one for retreat.
There is a quiet thread connecting them. The empress's daughter, Maria Amalia, married into the Bavarian ruling family; her other daughter married the heir to Saxony. Through those marriages, the girls educated and the vows made on this street reached into half the courts of Europe. Now turn back a few steps and pass through the garden gate of the Belvedere, where the great formal garden climbs the hill.