St. Stephen’s Cathedral (Stephansdom)
The first church on this site was consecrated in 1147. The Romanesque west front, with its Giant’s Door and Heathen Towers, survives from the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was rebuilt in the Gothic style. The great south tower, the “Steffl,” rises 136 metres and was finished in 1433. For centuries it was the city’s watchtower and its highest point.
The roof is famous. It is covered with some 230,000 glazed tiles laid in a zigzag pattern, with the double-headed eagle of the Habsburgs on one side and the arms of Vienna and Austria on the other. Inside are the stone pulpit carved around 1500 with a self-portrait of its sculptor peering from a window, and the tomb of Emperor Frederick III.
Mozart was married here in 1782, and his funeral was held in a side chapel in 1791. In the last days of the Second World War the cathedral burned, and the great bell, the Pummerin, crashed down. All Austria contributed to its restoration, and it reopened in 1952 with a new Pummerin, which rings on great feasts.
- Built
- 1137; rebuilt from 1304 to 1511
- Style
- Romanesque and Gothic
- Where
- Vienna, Austria
- Map
- Find it on OpenStreetMap