Steinhof Church

From 1904 to 1907, the Church of St. Leopold, also known as the Church at Steinhof or Otto-Wagner-Kirche am Steinhof, was built as part of the Lower Austrian State Sanatorium and Nursing Home for the Nervously and Mentally Ill Am Steinhof (later Otto-Wagner-Spital, since 2020 Klinik Penzing). Otto Wagner, the architect commissioned with the planning, had to consider the fact that this is an institutional church for mentally ill patients, as well as the particular requirements of such a structure in negotiations with physicians and nursing personnel.A doctor’s room, restrooms, and emergency exits were designed, and sharp corners on church benches were prohibited due to the possibility of harm.The left and right rows of benches contain five seats for “quiet” patients, while the two center rows of seats for “restless” patients have just four seats to allow for individual access if needed.Wagner developed a variation with flowing holy water instead of a regular holy water font to lessen the possibility of infection, as hygiene was always a primary concern in his work.He built the floor to slope toward the sanctuary so that patients in the rear rows could see further ahead.The sloping floor with water drainage channels and the smooth polished marble slabs on the walls made cleaning easy.Furthermore, because they were in mental institutions at the time, there were separate entrances not just for the nursing staff, but also for male and female patients.The Way of the Cross was excluded because of concerns that the occasionally brutal representations may incite hostility. The lower church for Protestants and the synagogue for Jews were no longer realized due to a lack of funding.It is unknown if a heater was installed from the start or whether it got antiquated and was therefore removed.

On October 8, 1907, Archduke Franz Ferdinand dedicated the cathedral.However, there were design disagreements between the Archduke, who disliked Art Nouveau, and Otto Wagner from the outset, which is why Wagner was not named in the opening address and got no further contracts from the imperial family.This schism, caused by very different views on architecture and aesthetics, prompted the Neue Freie Presse to ask in its October 6, 1907 issue: “And isn’t it a pretty irony of fate that pretty much the first sane large-scale secessionist building in Vienna was built for the insane?”

The church has been owned by the City of Vienna since 1920, when Vienna became a federal state.The structure was in decay until the 1990s.

The church reopened on October 1, 2006, after almost six years of substantial refurbishment work.The dome was re-gilded with 2 kg of gold leaf, the tambour base was repaired with artificially patinated copper sheets, and the Carrara marble façade was fully redone, among other things.The windows, mosaics, and statues have all been meticulously cleaned and repaired.Both the altar and the ambo were renovated.The Baumgartnerhöhe, on which the church is built, got its nickname Lemoniberg or Limoniberg from the golden dome, which now shines in fresh grandeur and can be seen from afar in Vienna’s west, and is shaped like half a lemon.Lemon Hill and Monte la Citrone are euphemisms for Psychiatric Hospital, as is Onion Parliament.In 2007, the church got three new bells from the Grassmayr Bell Foundry.The church is only open for services and for a charge on Saturdays and Sundays.These days also feature guided tours.