St Stephen's Cathedral

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Today's feast of the Holy Name of Mary was extended to the whole Church in thanksgiving for the deliverance of Vienna from the Ottoman siege of 1683, and no building carries that memory like the Stephansdom. Consecrated in 1147 and rebuilt in Gothic splendor, its south tower, the beloved Steffl, was completed in 1433 and climbs 136 meters over a roof of 230,000 glazed tiles patterned with the double-headed eagle. The cathedral's great bell, the Pummerin, was cast from cannons captured from the Ottoman army after 1683, victory turned to prayer; when fire swept the church in the last days of the Second World War the old bell fell and shattered, and the Viennese, who rebuilt their cathedral with their own donations by 1952, recast the Pummerin from its own fragments. Mozart was married and mourned here, and the bell born of cannons now rings in each new year over a city at peace.