Architecture | Fotoeins Fotografie

Vienna Steinhof Church: city- & Wagner-landmark

Above/featured: East side of the church, in afternoon light. Photo on 28 May 2023, X70 with wide-field WCL-X70 lens attachment, image corrected for geometric distortion.

Building: Steinhof church, also St. Leopold Church, 1907 // Kirche am Steinhof, Kirche zum heiligen Leopold.
Address: Baumgartner Höhe 1, in Penzing, the city’s 14th district.

Up on the city’s Baumgartner Heights is an example of Europe’s first modernist church at Steinhof. Dedicated to St. Leopold, the structure is one of the city’s finest examples of turn-of-the-century architecture, and one of the world’s most important churches in the Jugendstil or Art Nouveau architectural style. The church was designed and built by architect Otto Wagner, inaugurated in 1907 for patients and staff within the surrounding hospital complex the Lower Austria state, sanatorium, and nursing home for the mentally ill (Niederösterreichische Landes-, Heil-, und Pflegeanstalt für Geistes- und Nervenkranke) which included over 30 buildings and room for over 2000 beds. The bright, airy, and spacious modern design was met at that time with skepticism and criticism by local church officials. Of utmost importance on Wagner’s mind were the hospital patients: his church design was about gentle solitude, not fire and damnation.

The church was a collaborative effort with other Viennese artists, including mosaics and stained glass by Koloman Moser, angel sculptures by Othmar Schimkowitz, and exterior tower sculptures by Richard Luksch. The church roof is topped with a dome covered in gold-plated copper plates, whose bright yellow appearance in daylight merits the nickname “Limoniberg” (lemon hill) that’s visible in different parts of the city. The Steinhof church is an example of a “Gesamtkunstwerk“, where every detail and fixture contributed to a “total and functional work of art”; an architectural masterpiece of the period; and one of Otto Wagner’s most important creations.

I included this building as part of my description of Otto Wagner’s architectural legacy in Vienna and of the recent centenary celebration in Vienna of the city’s 19th- to 20th-century architectural transition from historicism to modernism.

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Fotoeins Friday: Bayreuth Opera House, 🇩🇪 UNESCO WHS

Bayreuth, Germany: inside the main hall of the Margravial Opera House (Markgräfliches Opernhaus) during guided tour. The building was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012.

I made the image above on 9 Jun 2024 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and the following settings: 1/30-sec, f/2.8, ISO6400, and 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-wBK.

Fotoeins Friday: Stralsund, 🇩🇪 UNESCO WHS

The Alter Markt square in Stralsund is brilliantly illuminated in late-day sun with St. Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas Church) and the Rathaus (City Hall) framing the scene at right. The greenish building at centre-left is the heritage-protected mid-18th century building Commandantenhus. Stralsund’s Old Town has been inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002.

I made the image above on 31 May 2024 with an iPhone15; the image is corrected for geometric distortion. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-wIH.

Berlin U5-Museumsinsel: Mozart, Schinkel, & Dudler

Above: Museumsinsel U-Bahn station entry-exit ‘A’. Photo, 17 May 2025 (P15).

The Berlin U-Bahn metro station Museumsinsel adjacent to the world renowned Museum Island is located on the U5 line which connects the city’s central station (Hauptbahnhof) with Alexanderplatz and the city’s eastern neighbourhoods. Construction for the station began in 2012 and lasted over 8 years. For the station interior at track level, architect Max Dudler was inspired by Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s 1815–1816 design of the stage for the Mozart opera “Die Sauberflöte” (The Magic Flute). For the appearance of the Queen of the Night, Schinkel imagined a large dome-like space like the overhead starry night sky. Over each of the two tracks in the U-Bahn station, Dudler designed a dark blue barrel-shaped vault embedded with thousands of white point-sources of light.

The fully-completed U5 extension from Hauptbahnhof to Alexanderplatz opened to the public on 4 December 2020, which at long last connected the Hauptbahnhof with Berlin’s U-Bahn city transport system. The Museumsinsel station on the U5 line opened on 9 July 2021. In addition to the city’s bus network, the station now allowed visitors to use the U-Bahn metro to reach the Museum Island complex, inscribed by UNESCO as World Heritage Site in 1999.

Artist and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) has his “fingerprints” on many of the city’s early- to middle 19th-century architecture, including in the immediate vicinity of the station the Neue Wache (New Guard House), Schlossbrücke (Castle Bridge), Friedrichswerder Church, Bauakademie (Building Academy), and the Altes Museum (Old Museum).

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Fotoeins Friday: Haithabu-Hedeby, 🇩🇪 UNESCO WHS

Just outside the city of Schleswig, Germany is the site of a former Viking settlement near the western end of the inlet Schlei. The sheltered harbour and a relatively short overland (portage) distance between the North and Baltic Seas made this an ideal location for settlement. The Viking sites Haithabu and Danevirke nearby have been inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2018.

I made the image above on 30 May 2024 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and the following settings: , and 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-wI3.