It wasn’t open yet, so I sat on the steps and watched Viennese life in the park. As tourists were taking pictures of the church from the plaza, I suspected that I was ending up in all sorts of pictures, so I made a special effort to look into the cameras and grin broadly. Wonder if anyone will notice. I was accosted somewhat half-heartedly by a Mozart-bewigged concert ticket seller, who gave up with an air of resignation before I had even declined politely. The large pool before the church made me want to go in – and indeed there were two women playing fetch with their dogs in the pool. The Viennese seem to really love their dogs. There are pooches everywhere – on the U-Bahn, on the streets, in cafes… and little of the associated mess. The more time I spend on the continent the more I wonder why Britain finds it so difficult to keep the streets clean and the trains running on time!
The Karl after whom Karlskirche is named is St Carlos Borromeo, conveniently also the name saint of the emperor Karl, who somehow managed to honour himself as well as the saint. I didn’t think it was one of the apostles, though he could have been an auxiliary, and I envisioned the following exchange taking place on a first century mission trip:
“Who’s that?”
“Who’s that?”
“That’s Karl.”
“Karl?”
“Yeah, he’s a temp. Matthew’s off sick today.”
The church opened, saving me from the questionable musings of my own brain. Again my German went well, and she even looked surprised when I requested an English audioguide in German, having already programmed in the German language code. Yess! Though, as I wrote in my journal, I was sure it would fall apart once the Black Room arrived.
The church really is a Baroque masterpiece, with ceiling frescoes everywhere (well, on the ceilings, anyway).
I noted the tetragrammaton in a triangular, Trinitarian symbol in the centre of a sunburst high above the altar.
I took the lift up to the dome, which provided a rare chance to see the frescoes up close while their restoration is underway.
You can also climb several more steep flights encased in scaffolding, but since it seemed to require a sign saying, “Schreien ist uncool” I thought it might be a bad idea. I had a good look at the paintings before I felt the boards move as people walked, and began to feel the height – not inconsiderable, I might add – and fearing the onset of a very inconvenient panic attack, I took the next lift back down. Perhaps to the consternation of the lift attendant, but better than a frozen Kathleen at 200 feet.
You can also climb several more steep flights encased in scaffolding, but since it seemed to require a sign saying, “Schreien ist uncool” I thought it might be a bad idea. I had a good look at the paintings before I felt the boards move as people walked, and began to feel the height – not inconsiderable, I might add – and fearing the onset of a very inconvenient panic attack, I took the next lift back down. Perhaps to the consternation of the lift attendant, but better than a frozen Kathleen at 200 feet.Next, I proceeded to the heart of Vindobando, the original Roman settlement of Vienna, now the Innere Stadt. This of course led me straight to Stephansplatz and the iconically-roofed Stephansdom.
I walked around three sides of the cathedral and past some very smelly fiaker (the equally iconic mode of Viennese transport, the horse and carriage), I found the door and… wow! Gothic!
The illusory dome painting was impressive – I knew it wasn’t real but I still had to stand at the front of the church and look back to get any sense of the real shape of the roof.
It was darker, but still Baroque with all the frills.
After so much Baroque, it was both a shock to the system and a breath of fresh air. And not overpowering, thanks to the unobtrusive but contemporary windows replacing those destroyed in a fire, and those removed before a subsequent fire.
There were also an unexpectedly large number of worshippers around, for a large cathedral these days.
Once outside again, I walked in one direction, intending to check which later, but soon stopped for lunch. In Vienna, lunch is usually the main meal, and when in Rome… or Vienna. I found a sort of pan-Asian café serving sushi, curry and food from all regions between. Chicken Peanut Noodles sounded a little bit like pad thai, so I gave it a go. And I spent the meal gazing up at a wonderful Jugendstil motif.
Lots of people seem to dine alone in Vienna. I asked my waitress if it was common for people to go out to lunch alone, and she told me that Vienna is the most single city in Austria, which was another of those random statistics I love. Then she sighed in a way that made me think that she was (a) single and (b) not really enjoying it. Then, fortified, I struck forth to try to locate Franziskanerkirche. I thought I had stumbled across it, but later discovered it was the Jesuitenkirche – just as well, since it didn’t look terribly Franciscan, with its forty shades of ice cream.
The illusory dome painting was impressive – I knew it wasn’t real but I still had to stand at the front of the church and look back to get any sense of the real shape of the roof.
There was a modern painting – I wasn’t all that keen on the painting, or at least the headache-inducing colourscheme, but I liked that in this historical centre, with tourists filing through its churches, the church was still concerned with new things and different modes of expression.
Since I wasn’t really sure where I was, the question of where I was going next was not so simple. I ended up going south instead of north, and found myself at the Dorotheum, so called due to its position of Dorotheegasse.
It was an upmarket pawn shop for the well-to-so who had fallen on hard times – hence the euphemism, “Going to visit Aunt Dorothy.” Then, rather optimistically, I followed signs for the Lutheran church, but in the true spirit of the Reformation, it was locked. I located myself on the map, then keeping it carefully in hand I picked my way, intersection by intersection, to Peterskirche, a compact but towering central church and the headquarters of Opus Dei (daVincilicious, if you’re into Dan Brown).
It was darker, but still Baroque with all the frills.
Again, the tetragrammaton made an appearance above the altar – I wondered if this was a local trend, or something I had missed in Baroque art before. I haven’t worked this out, but since getting back I have tracked down a couple of other Baroque churches with this symbol, all north of the Alps, so it seems there is something there.
As I was getting ready to leave, mass was being prepared. This was clearly another working church. I had seen an exhibit at the Secession that consisted of €500 notes arranged in a frame, representing the average Austrian annual wage. Its value as art was considerably more than the hard currency within, and indeed the entire work was a comment on whether a monetary value could be placed on the work of the artist in creating art. The fourth church of the day was the fourth that seemed to have both a thriving liturgical life and a humanitarian place in the community. I am extremely familiar with the decline of the modern city-centre church, as fewer people live in the city centres of Europe, but you could say that God is alive and well and living in Vienna!
I thought about something Danny said in Munich, about balance – there has to be a balance between repulsive extravagance (like the Pala d’Oro in San Marco, Venice – a shockingly ostentatious display of financial triumphalism from an age of abject poverty in the city) and actually providing a facility and having the visibility to be a force for good. It occurred to me, as I watched the tourists file in and out and the elements being laid out, that if the people coming to visit these churches perhaps aren’t all that keen on Jesus, they’ve certainly got to be keen on art, and perhaps if they are able to see something in all the Rococo that Philistines like me miss, and connect that with the work of the church in the literature available, they may be left with a more three-dimensional impression of what the works represent.
Even after all that reflection, I was not yet church-weary, and wound my way to Michaelerkirche, getting distracted by a fiaker-jam in from of the Michaelertract, the entrance to the Hofburg (imperial palace) from the Innere Stadt and what the Rough Guide called an “exuberant arc”, and certainly my classic image of Vienna.
The Michaelerkirche was originally a Gothic structure, and retains its austere but light plain interior, but with a dramatic Rococo altar, all tumbling clouds and angels.
Then headed down to Minoritenkirche, now the centre of Vienna’s Italian church community, but as people were gathering for mass there, I left it to another day. I was so relieved to see the U-Bahn station that I staggered down the steps and back to the hotel. Investigating the TV for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could just about handle the German in a gala concert being televised live from southern Austria, which included a wonderful performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. You may think that one doesn’t need much German to follow that, but I maintain that he played with an accent. Afterwards, I channel-hopped until I found BBC Prime, which was showing “The Definite Article”, my favourite Eddie Izzard show, and it was with the feline experiments of Gareth Pavlov and, “Follow him! He speaks in sentences!” that I saw out the evening.
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