Friday night in Vienna (and throughout many cities in Austria) was Lange Nacht Der Kirchen or Long Night of the Churches. This was sort of similar to the Long Night of City Workers...but a bit more full of classical music and architecture rather than cotton candy and segway rides. Three friends and I met up for dinner before our long evening of churches, and began at the church where one of my friend's co-workers was performing as part of a choir. After that we didn't have much of a game-plan other than to wander around and go in whatever churches we passed. We were also dodging rain showers through much of the evening, so we stayed in the parts of town with the highest concentration of cool churches.
Each church participating in the evening had some sort of activity or program going on, generally musical, and you were allowed to wander around while listening. So often churches start to look the same inside, especially churches in Europe that were all built around the same time, but it was really interesting to go to so many churches in only a few hours and really see and feel the differences of each one.
"We do not belong to the night nor to the darkness"
Our first stop, Pfarre Rudolfsheim, where we knew someone in the choir
From there we did have a bit of a discussion of where to go next, whether we should go farther outside the city to a potentially really cool church, or whether we should head towards the middle of town for the higher density of churches...we opted for density.
The chapel of the Hofburg palace, which was really crowded (it isn't a very big space to begin with) so this is as far in as I got.
Augustinerkirche, located next to the Hofburg. Originally built in the 1300s, this building houses the hearts of all of the Habsburg rulers (their bodies are in the crypt elsewhere)
Gorgeous organ music to help set the tone of the interior
A memorial to Archduchess Maria Christina, which is large and hauntingly beautiful
Peterskirche, just off the Graben
very ornate inside
we had a pew rating system for comfortableness at each of the churches...Liz is trying out these.
Next we went to Minoritenkirche, which is a large, dark, cavernous space. The church was built in the late 1200s and early 1300s. It is hard for me to even wrap my head around how old that actually is.
A full scale mosaic of the Last Supper hangs on the wall. Apparently it weighs 20 tons.
A side chapel inside, again, very dark, lit only by candles, but the ceiling here is the height of the church, so it seems to just go up forever.
Maria am Gestade
Ruprechtskirche, one of if not the oldest church in Vienna, completed in 740.
Again, I cannot really fathom how old that is, and how something could have survived that long. What is also interesting about this church is that it is in an area with lots of bars and restaurants. So this being Friday night, the streets are fairly rowdy with people just enjoying the start of the weekend, but as soon as you stepped inside this church you were handed a candle and a song sheet, and you couldn't hear the outside at all.
We stayed for the first part of the Taizé service they were having, which was really cool. I've had the opportunity to participate in quite a few Taizé services recently and I really enjoy them.
Our last stop for the night was Stephansdom, which was probably a good ending to the evening (by now it is just about midnight) and I'd been into the back of the church before to see these multi-colored lights, but this night they allowed you to walk all around inside and enjoy the lights from all over the church as well as the music.
Definitely another successful evening of things I wouldn't normally do on a Friday night, but I feel spoiled that I live in a city that does things like this. The four of us had a really good time exploring the city even if they are some of the places we pass on a regular basis. We're keeping our eyes (and calendars) open for the next Lange Nacht!
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