Zentralfriedhof, Vienna
Half the size of Zurich, twice as much fun – Vienna’s jest for the cemetery of three million, Beethoven and Schubert reburied among the honour graves’ pantheon.
At a glance
- Type
- Central cemetery
- Period
- 1874
- Style
- Historicist necropolis; Jugendstil church
- Location
- Simmering, Vienna, Austria
- Coordinates
- 48.1500, 16.4392
- Scale
- 2.5 km2; 330,000 graves; 3 million interred
Overview
Vienna’s Central Cemetery opened 1874 interconfessional by decree – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, later Muslim and Buddhist sections sharing the imperial plain. The Ehrengraber’s honour rows gathered music’s pantheon by reburial – Beethoven and Schubert moved in 1888, Brahms and the Strausses following – Mozart’s memorial standing for the lost grave. Hrdlicka’s gate and Wagner-school church crown the axis.
History
The schone Leich – the beautiful corpse – names Vienna’s funerary connoisseurship; the Funeral Museum’s sitting-up coffins and the 71 tram’s death-line lore feed the city’s gallows tenderness. The old Jewish section’s recovering wilderness holds Schnitzler’s and Friedell’s stones – memory’s repair ongoing.
Architecture and Design
Max Hegele’s Lueger church (1911) domes Jugendstil over the main axis – Otto Wagner’s school applied to eternity; arcaded crypts and the presidents’ vault order the republic’s protocol. Deer graze the meadow sections at dusk.
Cultural significance
The Zentralfriedhof is Vienna’s relationship with death made municipal – music’s pilgrimage rows and the city’s self-irony – Europe’s second-largest cemetery as Gesamtkunstwerk.
Visiting today
Gates daily; Gate 2 leads to the honour graves’ circuit. The funeral museum and falter’s deer complete the visit; All Saints’ candles flood the dusk.
Getting there
Tram 71 from Schwarzenbergplatz runs the storied line to the gates.
Sources and resources
Find it on the map
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