Vienna's cathedral roof is so steep that rain alone keeps it clean
St. Stephen's in Vienna wears a roof of 230,000 glazed tiles, patterned with a Habsburg double eagle, pitched so steeply that rain washes it and snow rarely settles. When fire brought the old timber frame down in 1945, rebuilders used more than 600 tonnes of steel instead of copying the wooden bracing.
The site's story begins with the Treaty of Mautern in 1137, which first called Vienna a civitas and set aside land for a new parish church. Conrad III and nobles leaving on the Second Crusade attended its dedication in 1147. It was not raised in empty fields, as once thought: heating works in 2000 exposed graves 2.5 metres down, carbon-dated to the 4th century. A fire in 1258 wrecked the first building, and a larger Romanesque replacement was consecrated on 23 April 1263, an anniversary still marked by three minutes of the great bell each evening.
The Gothic church grew around the old one. Albert I ordered a new choir in 1304; Duke Rudolf IV laid a cornerstone in 1359 and, in 1365, boldly gave a mere parish church a cathedral chapter. Vienna only won its own diocese on 18 January 1469, over resistance from the bishops of Passau, and became an archbishopric in 1722. The south tower, nicknamed Steffl, took 65 years, from 1368 to 1433, and reaches 136 metres; it served as the command post during the sieges of 1529 and 1683, and night watchmen lived in it until 1955. Its northern twin was abandoned in 1511 at 68 metres and given a Renaissance cap in 1578.
The main portal, the Giant's Door, may take its name from a mammoth thighbone dug up in 1443 and hung over it for decades, or from an old German word describing its funnel shape. The flanking Heidentürme, about 65 metres tall, were built from Roman rubble, hence their name meaning heathen towers.
In April 1945 a Wehrmacht captain, Gerhard Klinkicht, ignored orders to shell the building. Days later fires set by looters in nearby shops spread to the roof and it collapsed; brick shells protected the pulpit and Frederick III's tomb, though choir stalls carved in 1487 were lost. It fully reopened on 23 April 1952. The Pummerin bell, cast in 1951 and weighing 20,130 kilograms, is the largest in Austria. Its predecessor from 1705 used metal from nearly 300 Ottoman cannons.
Source: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna
