Description of the attraction
Cathedral of St. Stefan, located in the city center, a remarkable monument of the Austrian late Gothic. Its construction began in 1137, but the fires caused great damage to the Romanesque building and in 1359 the construction of the current building began. During the Second World War, the cathedral was badly damaged, but thanks to the efforts of the entire Austrian people, it was successfully restored.
Cathedral towers and portals
The gigantic gates with an elegant carved portal and two identical Pagan towers have survived from the Romanesque basilica. The southwestern portal is called the "Singing" portal, since only men and choristers entered the cathedral through it. The sculptures of the portal depict St. Paul - a witness to the martyrdom of St. Stephen and Duke Rudolf IV - the founder of the cathedral, holding a model of the cathedral. Women passed through the Episcopal portal to the cathedral
In 1359, the South Tower was built, and in the middle of the 15th century, the North Tower began to be erected, but it remained unfinished. It contains the largest cathedral bell (the second by weight in Europe - 20183 kg) Pummerin. You can hear Pummerin's voice only 10 times a year. The bright black-white-yellow-green roof of the cathedral, with geometric patterns, is made up of more than 250 thousand majolica tiles.
Cathedral interior and museum
The interior of the temple is decorated with sculptures and stained-glass windows. The pulpit in the main nave is decorated with portraits of the four Church Fathers. The sculptor depicted himself looking out of the "window" under the stairs of the pulpit. The crypt under the main altar contains urns with the remains of some members of the Habsburg imperial dynasty.
The Cathedral Museum has a large collection of religious paintings and sculptures, valuable exhibits of decorative and applied art.
It is interesting
- To the left of the Giant Gate you can see the "Viennese measures" - the outline of a loaf of bread and an elbow-length ruler. Here it was possible to conduct a control measurement of the purchased product and calculate how much you were cheated when buying. The dishonest merchant caught in this way was put in a cage and several times immersed in the waters of the Danube. Perhaps this is where the expression "tarnished reputation" came from …
- The north tower of the cathedral is noticeably lower than the south one, which gave rise to many legends, where, of course, evil spirits, a beautiful beloved, a crashed architect appear. But most likely, there was simply not enough money, since the Ottoman army was approaching Vienna at that time.
- For a fee, you can view the catacombs of the cathedral and go upstairs to the observation deck of the North Tower (by lift) or the South Tower (on foot), from where an indescribable view of the capital of Austria opens.
- At the entrance to the cathedral on the right is the icon of the Virgin Mary from the Hungarian city of Pecs. According to legend, when the country was threatened by the Turks, tears flowed from her eyes for two weeks.
- There are 18 altars in the cathedral, not counting the altars in the chapels. The most famous and worth seeing are the central altar (Hohaltar), created by the Pock brothers in the 17th century, and the Wiener Neustadt altar, considered the earliest Baroque altar in Vienna.
