Stephansdom

~The Stephansdom or St. Stephen’s Cathedral was massive. It is beloved to the Viennese, and was one of the first things rebuild after WWII.

"The lingering nostalgia for Vienna's central function that has endured post-1945 is expressed, for example, in the assistance given by the Austrian Federal Lands to the resconstruction of the cathedral of St. Stephen's" (Ahrens, 218).

It even has its own stop on the subway. The church is definitely gothic. Like the Voitvkirche, there is very heavy ornamentation. It has one very large peak, which takes 343 steps to climb. Standing at the base and looking up I couldn’t even see the top. It was a little disappointing that there was scaffolding cleaning the tower when we were there, but from pictures I have seen it too has “spikes” that stick out of the peak. The church has many peaks and even more patterns than the Voitvkirche. Patterns that I could pick out were circles, rectangles, triangles, and diamonds. There are many stained glass windows and a huge front door. The door has many sculptures or what look like carvings over it, and there was a depiction of Jesus and two angels. What was most impressive was the tiled roof. I had never seen tiling like that before. It has 250,000 colored tiles over the entire church. The main pattern is a chevron with colors of yellow green white and black. On the opposite side the church there is a Habsburg coat of arms in the tile. What was interesting to me was walking around the church. It was apparent that it had been added onto through the years from 1147 to the 15th century the church kept expanding.