Sisi chapel

Northeast view of the Sisi Chapel

The Sis (s) i Chapel is at Pfaffenberg ( Wienerwald preferred) chapel in Wiener district Sievering ( district Dobling ) near the Gspöttgraben to about 360 m above sea level. A.

history

The neo-Gothic Sisi Chapel was built in Vienna in honor of the marriage of the imperial couple Elisabeth and Franz Joseph I on April 24, 1854. Johann Carl Freiherr von Sothen commissioned the architect Johann Garben to plan the Am Himmel chapel , an area of the Vienna Woods in Sievering. In addition to the memory of the historical event, the chapel should also serve as a future grave site for the client and his wife Franziska. In the years 1854 to 1856, the chapel was finally built according to plans drawn up by Garben, with von Sothen commissioning the city master builder Josef Kastan to do this . After the completion of the chapel, it was finally consecrated on July 31, 1856 to the namesake of the imperial couple, St. Elisabeth , St. Francis of Assisi and St. Joseph .

The chapel was badly damaged in the Second World War and then left to decay. The altarpiece was dismantled for fear of acts of vandalism. In 1997 the Wald Kuratorium acquired large parts of the "Am Himmel" area, in 2002 also bought the chapel for 3500 euros from Caritas and finally initiated its renovation as part of the overall revitalization of the area ( tree circle , vineyard, children's playground, café-restaurant "Oktogon") ). The multi-year work, which cost a total of EUR 1.1 million and was partly financed by the Vienna Old Town Conservation Fund, was completed in 2005. The interior was redesigned into an experience space that should make the connection between nature and culture tangible. This is mainly achieved through a newly built glass roof. In addition, fourteen screens set into the wall depict a kind of ordeal of nature through human intervention.