In the blink of an eye, in evolutionary terms, we’ve gone from caves to cathedrals. In the last five centuries alone, architectural styles and building techniques have evolved into something entirely different. Architecture is about much more than good looks, though – constructed spaces affect people’s mentality.
Vienna is a perfect example of these changes in European architecture, and in these varying styles we can glimpse changes in society – changes in how we think and feel. Today, visitors on a Vienna cruise will see a city built to impress; a wealth of the grand and beautiful concentrated in one place. But where did Vienna’s architecture start out, and how did it develop? What can the city’s famous landmarks tell us about its soul?
A bit about the Romans
In the beginning of our tale, there was ancient Roman architecture. Now the Romans knew how to build. In engineering terms, they were light years ahead of much of Europe. When Italy had flushing toilets, England had holes in the ground. Where much of Europe lived in mud huts by rivers, they had scenic villas served by towering aqueducts. As a building style, it was going to catch on.
As their empire spread through Europe, so did their ideas on better ways to build. And once the empire receded, countries across Europe were left with the architectural know-how to build their own styles on the Roman template, and their own cultural identities. This is when Vienna’s architecture really started, and one of the city’s most popular attractions is probably the best example of the birth of Viennese style:
St Stephan’s Cathedral (Gothic)
By mixing the solid, systematic Romanesque style with Germanic influence, Europe developed Gothic. Early medieval Romanesque existed before Gothic, but it seems that ever-stylish Vienna was happy to knock down its older buildings to create more fashionable alternatives on the old foundations. And in the 1400s, the Gothic style was pretty darn fashionable.
Travel to the city on a Vienna cruise, and you’ll quickly recognise the Austrian Gothic style by its spires and arches – think gargoyles and stained glass. St Stephan’s Cathedral, completed in 1147 but added to right into the 1400s, is a prime example of the Gothic style. The building was changed and added to repeatedly over time, so when you look at St Stephan’s Cathedral you’re not seeing Austrian Gothic as it started – but instead, a patchwork of developing styles as Viennese architecture found its feet. Compare the squat, plain towers on the cathedral’s west front from the 1100s with the enormous spire and incredible mosaic roof, added in the 1400s, and you’ll see a city which was beginning to embrace an altogether more refined style.
The Renaissance style
The Renaissance style was the precursor to the soaring, floral Baroque. Renaissance architecture replaced the irregular forms of medieval building styles (we’re looking at you, Gothic) with symmetry, order and a longing for the romantic ideals of ancient Greece and Rome.
The city of Florence led the way in terms of Renaissance architecture, most notably with the domes and bright white walls of buildings like the Duomo – and the style spread throughout Europe, even as far as Poland and Ukraine. However, Vienna fell under siege by Turkish forces in the early 1500s for an entire century and a half, essentially missing out on the vast majority of the Renaissance. Instead, the minds of its architects, and the city’s building materials, were concentrated on fortifying the city to defend it against invasion. Had the Turkish forces won, a Vienna cruise holiday could show you a distinctly more Ottoman European city today.
The National Library (Baroque)
Vienna missed out on the Renaissance, but made up for it during the Baroque – which could be why the city boasts so many eye-strokingly beautiful buildings from the period. This was the style of glorious angelic statues, crowned in gold and reaching for the heavens. Baroque replaced the stern, pious lines of the Gothic with gilded visions of the divine; flashy shows of wealth during the rise of Europe, when money flooded into the major cities.
Look out for the National Library during your time in Vienna, which anyone could be forgiven for thinking was a palace. Gigantic pillars hold up curved walls and ceilings which are covered in magnificent frescoes – as far removed from Gothic sensibilities as it was possible to get. But there was more going on here than just a devotion to the ornate and the beautiful – Vienna’s wealth and power was becoming more democratised, trickling down from the seats of power to the rising merchant class.
With this came the desire for the betterment of society as a whole – and the creation of spaces, like the National Library, which were intended not only for the wealthiest people in their palaces. As living conditions improved as a whole, so too did the elegant Baroque buildings – a devotion not only to God and stately power, but to wealth and status too. Europe’s newfound love of beautiful spaces extended outdoors too, and cities like Vienna began to see the rise of vast ornamental gardens like those at the palaces of Schönbrunn and Belvedere – both hugely popular landmarks for visitors on a Vienna cruise trip today.
The Ringstrasse (Eclecticism)
If the Baroque period had seen Vienna’s wealthy, stylish upper class come into their own, then the period of Eclecticism that followed in the 19th century threw Vienna’s style and wealth into the public forum. The famous Hofburg Palace has been Vienna’s traditional seat of power right back to the 1200s, and has benefitted from changing architectural styles through various extensions and redesigns through the centuries – but it’s the fact that visitors don’t need to travel to the Hofburg to see Vienna’s wealth and style that was the true legacy of Eclecticism. The Ringstrasse brought beautiful buildings out into the city centre.
The Ringstrasse may not be as monumentally impressive as the city’s palaces and public buildings, but it does describe a change in the spirit of the city. This central ring road is a stately parade, commissioned by Emperor Franz Joseph and built in the latter half of the 19th century. The Emperor invited architects from all over Europe to build their best along the main road, which replaced the medieval walls that once defended the city. The Ringstrasse became lined with a selection box of elegant building styles, including the Votivkirche, the Parliament building, and the Museum of Applied Arts. This was the rise of architectural beauty in the public space to benefit the many; no longer looming over them from a place of stately control.
During the 1800s the spirit of the city turned its devotion to music in particular, with the design and construction of the world-famous Opera House. This was a palace of marble and gold, and the first major building on the Ringstrasse – built in a more modern tribute to the Renaissance style, known as Neo-Renaissance. Vienna missed out on the original Renaissance, but it certainly made up for it the second time round – and developed a reputation as the “City of Music”.
Postsparkasse (Secessionist)
Vienna had grown used to beautiful buildings by the end of the nineteenth century, not least with the famous Opera House throwing open beautiful spaces for public consumption. Thanks to the democratisation of education, art and music however, the working classes were getting their own ideas of useful spaces – buildings that dispensed with artistry and fussiness.
The Postparkasse (Post Office Savings Bank) is the perfect example of this more industrialised architectural style that prevailed at the end of the 1800s. The clean, straight, square lines of this building shocked many at the time – a complete removal from Vienna’s centuries-long devotion to ornate buildings. Visitors to the Postparkasse will find a relentlessly functional public building which takes the palatial sensibilities of Vienna’s heritage, but transforms it into a clean, modern, minimalist space. Step inside, and the glass-and-steel ceiling is reminiscent of a stately conservatory – but made with new, affordable materials, in a new, affordable style. The top of the building was adorned with solid angelic figures that watched over not the wealthy and the powerful, but the people who for centuries had been building the beautiful spaces with their own hands.
The Postparkasse may not compete against Vienna’s palaces for the soaring, gilded wow factor, but it is a palace in its own right, and well worth seeing on your next Vienna cruise. It’s one that defines the growth of a city, like many in Europe, where the class of people who once stood dwarfed by imposing cathedrals, palaces and the power of the state now had the knowledge, and the means, to turn their hands to impressive spaces for their everyday use. More than this, the industrialist style paved the way for the buildings of the twentieth century which now sit alongside Vienna’s older landmarks. Industrialist buildings like the Postsparkasse, and those that came after it, have created their own flexible and affordable template for the architecture of the twenty-first century. Who knows what kind of buildings await visitors on a Vienna cruise a century from now?
Article images courtesy of David Monniaux, -JvL- and j. Royan.
