Karlskirche

One of the landmarks in Vienna that we enjoyed seeing was the Karlskirche, the "Charles Church", dedicated to Charles Borromeo. You can see virtual tours of the building yourself, here. You can also read an interesting history of the church here.

Vienna had Christkindlmarkts everywhere, it seemed, and the plaza in front of the Karlskirche was no exception. They had even set up a petting zoo. (I even got to see Ryan talking to the animals.)



I've visited the church multiple times in the past, but this time was the first time we had to pay for admission. However, we discovered that the reason was two fold: 1.) They had spent the last four years renovating the paintings in the dome of the church, and 2.) They had errected a giant elevator in the middle of the church so you could actually walk around inside the dome and see the pictures closer up.



My first reaction when I saw that big monstrosity in the middle of the chuch was, "This is the worst idea I've ever seen in my life." However, as ugly and disruptive as the things was, it was pretty cool to go up the elevator and see the dome up close.

Here are some pictures of the paintings in the dome:

I thought it was pretty cool seeing the paintings when looking straight up at them, rather than from down below in the church.


Once we took up the elevator up to a platform inside the dome, we could still climb another set of stairs that took us all the way into the parapet of the church at the very very tippy top. From a small set of windows up there, we could see the panaroma of Vienna below us. (We don't have any pictures because, frankly, Ryan and I were both pretty terrified of being up there, held up by nothing more than scaffolding, a hundred feet off the ground.) It did make an interesting "stairway to heaven", though.



We did get a picture of the dove (Holy Spirit) on the ceiling of the very top of the church, which in itself was cool, since you normally wouldn't even really be able to see it from so far below.