A Jam-Packed Day of Sightseeing in Vienna (Thursday, August 6th, 2015)

As this was our last day in Vienna, we had several sights we wanted to see.  We began the day by walking to the Hofburg Palace, which was only a few blocks from our hotel.  This was a huge complex full of buildings that comprised the Habsburg seat of power for so many years.  Along the way, we passed a monument to Mozart, so we snapped a quick picture.

The Imperial Palace complex is so huge, it was hard for us to find the building we wanted, which was the Hofburg Treasury.  Here is a panoramic shot of most of the complex.

Here are the kids with a monument to Prince Eugene of Savoy, who was considered to be one of Austria's greatest Generals of all time.

With the help of my guidebook (bless you, Rick Steves), we finally found the entrance to the museum.  The signage around Vienna was very poor, even in German.  We were so used to London, where they have directional signs for blocks ahead of a major attraction, that this made us prone to wander in Vienna.  

A few words about the Habsburgs and their Treasury.  One of the reasons the Habsburgs ruled for hundreds of years was because they chose to retain and expand their power by influential marriages instead of wars.  I did not realize that both Marie Antionette (wife of King Louis XVI of France and known for her "let them eat cake" quote) and Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma (Napoleon's wife) were Habsburg Emperor daughters.  As the family married off their daughters to influential world leaders, they acquired more and more kingdoms in their domain.  This enabled them to call themselves leaders of the Holy Roman Empire.  With more and more kingdoms came more respect, power and wealth.  All of this money allowed them to purchase precious items for their Treasury, or they were given rare and valuable items as gifts from wealthy patrons.  This was truly a fascinating collection of items.  Of course, we used audio guides, since they were available in English.  Most of the signage was in German.  There were lots of displays of coronation attire used over the years.

This Imperial gem is the world's largest cut emerald.  Hadley and I loved this one, because emerald is our birthstone.

There were some interesting pieces of Habsburg furniture.  We were able to see the cradle of Napoleon's infant son, but we didn't get a picture of it.  This is a cabinet containing the keys to all of the coffins of Habsburg family members.  We learned that they store different parts of their bodies in different churches in Vienna.  Their hearts are in one church, their innards are in another church, etc.  I am not sure why.  I guess they were spreading the wealth.

There were also the extremely rare items that were considered to hold great power in their own right.  The first was a unicorn horn.  The people of the time actually considered it to be a real unicorn horn.  It was thought to have magical healing powers.

The horn is actually a narwhal tusk, but Hadley and I are going to keep on believing in unicorns, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, etc.  Sidney would like to see how big the narwhal was that sacrificed this huge tusk.  

The other extremely rare and revered item is this agate bowl.

It was cut from a single piece of agate and at least dates back to the court of Constantine (4th century).  It  was considered to be the Holy Grail for years, due to the pattern in the bottom that spells out XRISTO (Christ) in the natural grain of the bowl (not carved in the bowl).  I could never see it, but I also could never see the patterns in the 3D dot pictures at the mall growing up, no matter how long I stared at them.

The Treasury contained so many other interesting religious relics.  We took a picture of a handful.  In today's society of skepticism, it is sometimes hard to understand how they believed in these things, but if you put yourselves in the shoes of people from the 1400s through the 1800s, you can understand how important these artifacts were to them.  I am sure they paid a pretty penny for the relics back in the day.  I still think they are fascinating.

These are said to contain a thorn from Jesus's crown of thorns and a wood particle from Jesus's cross.

 This also was thought to contain a particle of wood from the true cross of Christ.

This box was thought to contain a piece of wood from Christ's manger.  I did call shenanigans on that one, because we have learned that animal mangers in Christ's day were made of stone, not of wood.  Oh, well. 

 There were shelves and shelves of these guys, which were thought to contain bone fragments of the apostles and saints.  One of the Habsburgs had these special urns made for the collection.

Dan pointed this one out to me especially.  He said, "I don't know about the rest of them, but this guy was good!"  I got quite a laugh out of his joke.  The kids didn't get it.  Look at the nameplate.  Apparently, I have never taught my kids the Christmas carol about Good King Wenceslaus.  That is on the to-do list for this Christmas.  

This final one was very interesting to us.  As legend goes, St. Veronica was present at Christ's crucifixion.  As He was walking to Golgotha, carrying His cross, she gave Jesus her veil so that he could wipe his face.  Jesus took it, wiped his face and then handed it back. A miracle occurred, and an image of his face appeared on the veil.  She folded the cloth three times, and the image transferred onto all three pieces of the veil.  This was one of the three pieces of St. Veronica's veil.  

Whew!  After viewing all of this, it was time for lunch.  We made our way down one of the two major pedestrian streets in this part of Vienna, Graben.  We passed a plaque signifying that this was Chopin's former residence.  I am a Chopin fan from all of my years of piano lessons, so I made the kids take a picture.

Here is a picture of Graben.  It is really quite pretty for a pedestrian shopping district.

At lunch, Dan and I were downing our usual Coca Lights (Europe's version of Diet Coke).  They have the same "share a Coke with..." campaign going on as in the States right now.  This one made me laugh. Of course, Dan got "Date".  I got "Traumtyp."  I thought, what kind of name is that?!?  

I translated it at home.  It actually means "dream type."  Ha!

We knew that we wanted to take the 4:00 tour of the Vienna Opera House, so that meant we had time to dash to St. Peter's Church for a free organ concert after lunch.  We were able to sit inside the cool church for almost 20 minutes (did I mention it was very hot here?) and listen to beautiful organ music in these Baroque-style surroundings.   Awesome!

After the organ concert, we headed to the Vienna Opera House.  Unfortunately, the Opera House takes a "holiday" for July and August, so we weren't able to see an opera.  We were able to tour the amazing facilities, however.  We took a few quick pics with some opera costumes.

Here are some beautiful details of the original building.  

Unfortunately, much of the original building was destroyed during WWII bombing raids.  I can't imagine what people felt when they saw the destruction.  I would bet they wept openly in the streets.  It was really Vienna's showplace.  A small portion of the original does remain.  

Here is the view of the Emperor's box seat in the Opera.

They did rebuild the box in the same spot as the original location, but it has been greatly updated.  

Here is the view of the stage from the Emperor's box.  Not too shabby!

Due to my recent time spent at the Edward C. Smith Civic Center in Lexington, the most interesting part of the tour for me was backstage.  Here is a shot of the backstage area.  All of the fly riggings backstage were crazy.  Operas involve a ton of intricate scenery.  They have an entire second backstage area the same size as the huge stage, plus a third staging area underneath the floor so that they can have the scenery for the different Acts all lined up and ready to go.  They employ about 100 people backstage for each performance.  They don't repeat operas or ballets on a nightly basis, so they have to completely load out the stage and reload the stage for a different show each day.  They also have to allow rehearsal time between each load-out and load-in.  They may repeat an opera or ballet several days later, but never the next day.  

We learned about the annual Vienna Opera Ball, which is an Austrian event similar in popularity to  Oscars night in the USA. Interestingly enough, the Vienna Opera has an annual budget of about 150 million Euros.  They only earn about half of that through ticket sales and events (which are quite pricey), so the other half is subsidized by the government.  

It was so hot outside, we headed back to the hotel for a swim in the pool before we went to the Kunsthistoriches Museum to see the Habsburg's art collection.  (I am not even going to try to tell you how Dan pronounced that word...)  It was open late on Thursdays, so it fit into our evening perfectly.  We opted out of the audio guide and decided to just enjoy it at a leisurely pace.  It had lots of classical artists as you can imagine the Habsurgs would have acquired during their reign.  The building itself was so beautiful!

Here is a picture that includes a bit of the fabulous ceiling.  

Sidney was able to see the original painting of artwork she had studied at school this year in Reading/Language Arts class.  She recognized it immediately.  It is a painting of the Tower of Babel by Bruegel.  How neat it was was to bring her school studies to life!  She emailed the picture to Mrs. Sloop, her teacher.  

What a busy, but fun day!