Gallery » EUROPE/AFRICA/ MIDDLE EAST » Round the World 2019 - Europe » Vienna 2019 » 30 July: Rathaus & Votive Church
After enjoying a leisurely breakfast, we decided to take the metro to reach the far side of the Old Town to visit the Rathaus (Vienna’s City Hall) and other historic buildings. The area was beautiful with so many different buildings and lovely architecture. The Rathaus is the official seat of the Mayor and the meeting place of the city senate/provincial government and the Municipal Council/Landtag.
The Rathaus was built between 1872 and 1883 and is an amazing structure! Around 30 million bricks and more than 40,000 cubic meters of natural stone were used to build it. It has one of the biggest interior courtyards in Europe with an area of 2,804 m². The Festival Hall is 71 meters long, 20 meters wide and 18.5 meters high. If the fire authorities were to allow it, 1,500 couples could dance the waltz here at the same time. Impressive indeed!
We continued walking and found one of the campuses of the University of Vienna. Founded in 1365, it is the world’s oldest German-speaking University. It was interesting to see a campus building named after the French scientist, Lavoisier. We assumed it must be a science building given that he is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. He recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783).
We next visited the Votive Church (again, in German: Votivkirche). It’s an amazing structure!! Construction of the Votive began in 1854 and it was consecrated in 1879. Due to its location on the Ringstrasse, the Votive Church was also called the “Ringstrasse Church.” It was built to thank God for saving the life of Kaiser Franz Joseph following an attempted assassination. The exterior is only surpassed by its beautiful interior! Holy Mass is held every Sunday in multiple languages.
We returned back to The Hilton to enjoy a cold Diet Coke. Upon checking email in our room, to our dismay, we had an email advising of a credit card breach. So we had to attend to that mess for a couple of hours since it was a primary credit card and had numerous auto-pays associated with it. Oh well, thankfully our credit card company found the problem and halted use of the card before any major charges were incurred. So, in the long run it was all good but it did take a chunk of time to contact companies via phone to update credit card information (we didn’t want to do so online because that’s likely how the card was compromised).
At 6:00P we went to the Lounge to enjoy a well-deserved gin & tonic as well as some snacks before calling it an evening.
