Our road trip up to the Austrian MotoGP took us near Vienna so we made room for a stopover to take it in. We stayed right around the corner from the spectacular St. Stephen’s Cathedral so our early morning stroll beat the crowds and the rising sun splashed everything with vibrant shimmering gold.
Seeing St. Stephens support for Ukraine made me happy.
The cathedral is no stranger to the heartache of war. During the final months of WW II, it was saved from ruin when a German Captain Gerhard Klinkicht ignored orders to “fire a hundred shells and reduce it to rubble.” But in April 1945, civilians set fire to shops in Vienna’s historic centre to protest against the invading Soviet Army. The fire spread to the cathedral’s roof and it collapsed.
Besides being the burial place of many notable monarchs, the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was married here and the funeral for Formula One legend Niki Lauda was held inside.
