Towers and Bones...Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral)

It's finally getting sunny and warm in Vienna, and today, as a result of the sunniness and warmness, as well as me getting out of school three hours early, Ursula took me to thoroughly experience Stephansdom in downtown Vienna. Stephansdom was designed to symbolize three levels: the lowest level (underground) symbolizes the dead, and there are many, many dead people in the lowest level of Stephansdom. The middle or ground level, the church part, is for the living, and then the third level, for the saints and other holy creatures, is symbolized by a large amount of statues built slightly elevated off the ground.

Still above the third level is a bell tower. There are something like 600 steps up an ancient medieval stone spiral staircase to get to the top. It's completely worth it, however, because at the top is a wonderful, 360-degree view of pretty much all of Vienna (other than the suburbs).

After the bell tower we took part in a tour of the catacombs. I've been in a few castles and cathedrals already, but I've never been in the creepy, dark, tunnely parts. For those readers who don't get a picture in their heads with the mention of "medieval catacombs," I'll describe it for you.
First there's a small chapel with the preserved inner organs of high-standing members of Viennese society, mercifully shielded from viewing by metal urns. (Basically, they wanted to give the three major churches in Vienna the honor of keeping a part of the people, and so one church receives the heart, another church receives the body, and Stephansdom receives the organs... The tradition still carries on today, as far as I can tell...I'm sorry if this post is a little too grody, or a little too in-detail...I happen to find it terribly interesting.) The next part is the cemetery. The floor is dirt and the walls are stone, and it's extremely dark, and I could kind of picture someone with torch walking around, you know, like in all those movies set in the Middle Ages. This part of the church was built in the 14th century, but wasn't used as a mass cemetery until the 18th century, during an outbreak of the bubonic plague. As I mentioned earlier, there are more than 11,000 people buried in the catacombs. Again, I'm sorry about the gruesomeness of my post, but what I'm leading up to, is that as one walks through the catacombs of St. Stephen's, one can see the bones of more than 11,000 people, in little rooms lining the catacomb passageways. There are bones thrown around, in piles, or even built into stacks to conserve space. Just the sheer amount of bones is amazing. Basically after coming back up out of the catacombs, the only word on my mind was "bones." The tour itself was really interesting, and contrary to expectations, I didn't feel the least bit queasy throughout the whole experience ...I guess one could say that after a few centuries have gone by, bones stop being gross and just start being old.