A block of flats of the post-war reconstruction on the Danube Canal, designed by the architect Josef Vytiska and named after the Viennese politician Alma Motzko. It stands where a tower of the medieval city wall, an inn with two hundred years of history and the Café Siller followed one another. The building is not a listed monument; its lower floors are the Hotel Capricorno.
At a glance
Schwedenplatz 3–4 fills the corner between the square and the Laurenzerberg, on the line of the old city wall above the Danube Canal. Until the end of the nineteenth century the plot held a group of old houses, among them the inn “Zum roten Apfel”; they were replaced by a new building with the Café Siller and a hotel, which burned out in April 1945. The present building was put up after the war to plans by Josef Vytiska and bears the name Alma-Motzko-Seitz-Hof. The sources agree on the architect but not on the year: the Wien Geschichte Wiki gives both 1952 and 1965, and an article in Die Furche says it was completed in 1963. The City of Vienna’s building-period map places it in the years 1946–1976.
Key facts
- Where: Schwedenplatz 3–4, corner of Laurenzerberg, 1010 Vienna (Innere Stadt), Austria
- Name: Alma-Motzko-Seitz-Hof, after Alma Motzko, born Seitz (1887–1968), Christian Social member of the Vienna city council from 1919 to 1934
- Architect: Josef Vytiska (1905–1986)
- Date: post-war; 1952 in the Wien Geschichte Wiki entry for the building, 1965 in its entry for the site, completed in 1963 according to Die Furche; 1946–1976 in the City of Vienna’s building-period map
- Type: residential block, recorded by the Wien Geschichte Wiki as owner-occupied flats and by the city’s building-period map as social or non-profit housing filling a gap
- Protection: not on the list of protected monuments of the Federal Monuments Office; within the City of Vienna’s “Ringstraße” protection zone
- Current use: flats, shops and the Hotel Capricorno on the lower floors
- Coordinates: 48.211091, 16.378930 · open in Google Maps
History
The plot lies on the line of the ring wall built around 1200. Where the Laurenzerberg comes down to the Schwedenplatz stood one of its towers, first recorded in 1418 as the Angelpeckenturm, later called the Strasserturm and, by 1710, the Krotenturm, the “toad tower”, after the amphibians of the marshy corner below it. According to the Wien Geschichte Wiki it was pulled down in 1732, and a house was built on its foundations which, like the tower before it, held the city’s herring store. Next to it stood the house “Zum roten Apfel”, recorded in the land registers from the mid-fifteenth century. Its inn kept that name for more than two hundred years until it closed in 1890; a coffee house in the building held an informal stock exchange in 1849–1850, and the violinist Joseph Hellmesberger the elder was born there on 3 November 1828.
The old houses on the plot were pulled down around the turn of the century: the Wien Geschichte Wiki gives 1896 in its entries for the individual houses, and dates to 1907 the purchase by the café owner Josef Siller, who had a new building put up in which the Café Siller opened, with a hotel attached. The café, on what was then the Kaiser-Ferdinands-Platz and from 1919 the Schwedenplatz, had a garden towards the canal and a salon for ladies, and the psychologist Alfred Adler kept a regular table there. The hotel burned out in April 1945, during the fighting for Vienna.
After the war the site was rebuilt to plans by Josef Vytiska. Born in Vienna in 1905, Vytiska had studied under Peter Behrens and built the church of St. Josef next to the Sandleiten housing estate in 1936; after 1945, Die Furche writes, he became one of the most sought-after architects of the reconstruction. The article describes the building on Schwedenplatz as a classic example of the first post-war modernism. It was named after Alma Motzko, a Christian Social city councillor between the wars and a leading figure of the Catholic women’s organisation. The Hotel Capricorno occupies part of the building.
What you see
We have not found a free photograph that clearly shows this building, so this description follows the hotel’s own published photograph of the front. It shows a frame of slender vertical supports and horizontal floor slabs, with a continuous run of balconies on each floor behind light metal railings. Behind the balconies, coloured panels in shades of pink, turquoise, yellow-green and violet alternate across the front, and the hotel’s name runs in large letters along one of the balconies. The ground floor is a long glazed shop front with green awnings, and the entrance is marked by a small projecting canopy.
Practical information
- The building is a residential block with shops and a hotel; the interiors are private or for guests.
- The front faces the Schwedenplatz and the Danube Canal and can be seen from the square at any time.
- Nothing of the medieval tower or of the Café Siller is visible today; the history belongs to the site.
Getting there
The building stands directly on the Schwedenplatz, above the Schwedenplatz station of the U1 and U4 underground lines; the trams on the Franz-Josefs-Kai stop in front of it.
Nearby
- Hotel Post, Carl Caufal’s house on the Fleischmarkt with the hall of the Kammeroper, about 120 metres to the south.
- Österreichische Postsparkasse, Otto Wagner’s savings bank, about 150 metres to the south-east.
- Anker Clock on the Hoher Markt, about 400 metres to the west.
Do you know more?
On this page we have published what the Wien Geschichte Wiki, the City of Vienna’s building records and the press tell us about this building and its site. We have no photograph of the building we are free to publish, and the sources disagree on when it was built: 1952, 1963 or 1965. We have also not found the name of the developer, or pictures of the Café Siller and its hotel before 1945. If you know something — a date, the building permit, the people who lived here, an old photograph of the corner, a document, a book that mentions it — or if you can send us a photograph of the building, write to Sofia, who looks after these pages.
Write to Sofia or send a message on WhatsApp
Please start your message with the title of this page, so it reaches the right file. Every contribution is checked against independent sources before it goes on the page, and we always say where a piece of information came from.
Sources
- Wien Geschichte Wiki, “Alma-Motzko-Seitz-Hof” (after Felix Czeike, Historisches Lexikon Wien): date 1952, architect Josef Vytiska, the naming after Alma Motzko, the Hotel Capricorno in part of the building.
- Wien Geschichte Wiki, “Zum roten Apfel (1, Schwedenplatz)”: the house and inn, the stock exchange of 1849–1850, Joseph Hellmesberger, the Siller building and its hotel burned out in April 1945, the Alma-Motzko-Seitz-Hof by Vytiska dated 1965.
- Wien Geschichte Wiki, “Krotenturm”, “Haus Stadt 653”, “Haus Stadt 654”, “Café Siller (1)”, “Schwedenplatz” and “Alma Motzko”: the tower, the herring store, the demolition of the old houses, the café and the life of Alma Motzko.
- Evelyne Polt-Heinzl, “Was der Schwedenplatz heute erzählt”, Die Furche: the Hotel Capricorno as a classic building of early post-war modernism, by Josef Vytiska, completed in 1963; Vytiska’s training and career.
- City of Vienna, Open Government Data: building-period map (1946–1976, social and non-profit housing, gap infill) and protection zones (“Ringstraße”).
- Bundesdenkmalamt, list of protected monuments for Vienna, Innere Stadt, as published in the German Wikipedia Denkmalliste: no entry for Schwedenplatz 3–4.
- Hotel Capricorno, official website: photograph of the front.
- OpenStreetMap / Nominatim: position, returned as Hotel Capricorno, 3-4, Schwedenplatz, Innere Stadt, Wien.
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of places: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photoIs this page about you?
This page is read by travellers and heritage enthusiasts who find it on Google. Tell us how you are connected to this place and we will take it from there.