St. Stephen's Cathedral

Interesting facts

Two iron bars set into the wall beside the main door are medieval Viennese ell standards, letting merchants check cloth lengths of 89.6 and 77.6 centimetres.

The original Pummerin, cast in 1705, was made partly from nearly 300 cannons captured from the Ottoman besiegers of 1683.

That old bell crashed through the burning tower in April 1945 and shattered; its fragments were melted into the metal of the new Pummerin.

The Giant's Door may owe its name to a mammoth thighbone, dug up in 1443 during work on the north tower and hung above the portal for decades.

Until 1955 watchmen lived in a small apartment high in the south tower, keeping lookout through the night and ringing the bells if they spotted a fire.

One of the bells in the Romanesque towers, the Bieringerin or beer ringer, signalled closing time for the city's taverns until the 18th century.

The church is aligned to the sunrise on St Stephen's Day, 26 December, as it stood in the year construction began.

Digging for a heating system in 2000 uncovered 4th-century graves 2.5 metres below the floor, showing the church stands on an old Roman-era cemetery.

The rebuilt roof rises 38 metres above the floor, and after 1945 its lost timber frame was replaced with more than 600 tonnes of steel.

The Máriapócs icon of the Virgin was brought here from Hungary in 1697 on the emperor's orders after reports that it had wept real tears.

Why it is worth it

St. Stephen's Cathedral is the centre of Vienna in every sense: the U-Bahn's central interchange lies beneath its square, and its south tower, known to the Viennese as the Steffl, dominates the old-town skyline at 136 metres. A parish church was dedicated here in 1147, in the presence of German nobles about to leave on the Second Crusade, and the Romanesque west front with its two towers and the Giant's Door survives from the rebuilding of the 13th century. Everything else is Gothic, started in the 14th century and pushed ahead by Duke Rudolf IV, who founded a chapter of canons long before Vienna had its own bishop; the diocese came only in 1469.

The south tower took 65 years to build, from 1368 to 1433, and served as the city's observation post during the Ottoman sieges of 1529 and 1683. Its northern twin was abandoned in 1511 at 68 metres and capped in 1578 with a Renaissance top. It now holds the Pummerin, a bell of 20,130 kilograms, the largest in Austria. The most famous feature, though, is the roof: 111 metres long and covered with 230,000 glazed tiles laid in zigzags, with the Habsburg double-headed eagle picked out above the choir on the south side and the arms of the city and the republic on the north. Much of it had to be recreated after April 1945, when fire spread from looted shops nearby and brought down the roof, though the cathedral had escaped a German order to shell it.

Inside, look for the stone pulpit in the nave, a late Gothic masterpiece with portraits of the four Church Fathers; long credited to Anton Pilgram and now more often attributed to Niclaes Gerhaert van Leyden, it has at its base the Fenstergucker, a carved self-portrait of the unknown sculptor peering out of a window. The Wiener Neustädter Altar was commissioned in 1447 by Emperor Frederick III, whose elaborate tomb stands opposite. Mozart was married here, had two children baptised here, and his funeral was held in the Chapel of the Cross. Beneath the chancel, the Ducal Crypt holds bronze containers with the bodies, hearts or entrails of 72 members of the Habsburg dynasty, part of the catacombs beneath the church.

Getting there

The cathedral stands on Stephansplatz in the Innere Stadt, in the heart of Vienna. Stephansplatz station, served by the U1 and U3 lines of the Vienna U-Bahn, lies directly beneath the square. Vienna International Airport (VIE) is about 18 km away.

St. Stephen's Cathedral

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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