This walk is designed for families visiting Vienna with children. Moving through the Inner Stadt, we look backward to the city’s legends of brave knights and fearful dragons, while passing churches, monasteries, noble and humble residences.
For starters, we help kids to examine the central cathedral of Stephansdom, the landmark of Vienna. We tell the history of the building’s construction and how it influenced the entire city landscape around it. Walking through the huge church, we consider the decorations favored in Gothic building as well as the craftsmanship needed to create such a building in the medieval period. To this day, a large coterie of people are working constantly to maintain the building. They have special jobs which we explain. We will also see several religious figures and consider the mythic powers that were believed to be connected with them. An example is Zahnwehherrgott – The Toothache Jesus – who clearly is in agony. But he has strong powers, so it is best not to laugh at him.
Vienna in the Middle Ages was a typical Christian city and was not only dominated by the main church in the city centre but also by the many monasteries. We explore two. The Franciscan Monastery Kapuziner Kloster is an isolated order which is trusted to care for the graves of the Habsburg Family and pray for their souls. They have very little contact to society outside. By contrast, the Deutschorden (Teutonic Knights) is a knightly order which was devoted to running a hospital for the crusaders returning from Jerusalem and guest houses were crusaders passed the night on their way to Jerusalem. What they are doing today in Vienna is a tale we tell while visiting their interesting little church housed a few meters from Stephansdom.
Daily life in Vienna was hard in the 15th century. As we move along the narrow old streets with their mix of noble palaces and common houses, we help kids to grasp the average activities of common people and nobility and to understand how medieval society was organised. How were guilds structured? What were the city’s traditions? How did children live? How could you find someone living in Vienna using the old style of house numbers? All along the way, we encounter mythical figures of people and animals that have left their legends all along the cobbled streets of Old Vienna.