Vienna | Fotoeins Fotografie

25T60 Otto Wagner’s magnificent Church at Steinhof

E59, V07.

The city bus drops off passengers in front of a building with the words “Otto Wagner Spital”, a legacy of early 20th-century construction for a hospital complex. Many of the former hospital buildings are now art-, music-, and cultural-spaces.

Keeping faith with the accuracy of signs, it’s a short but steep walk on graded gravel paths until a large dome pokes out into the open behind the canopy of trees. On a sunny day, the dome looks like a bright yellow lemon to the city below.

Completed in 1907 to serve patients in the surrounding hospital complex, the Church of St. Leopold at Steinhof by Otto Wagner is one of Vienna’s most important buildings, one of the finest examples of turn-of-the-century Vienna Modernism, and considered to be Europe’s 1st modernist church. Today, the Wien Museum maintains and opens the still-functional church for the public.

Otto Wagner’s architectural and design legacy from the early 20th-century is predominantly secular, remaining visible throughout the city today.

*Seated near the top of Lemoniberg hill (345m), the church’s yellow dome can be seen for miles around.*

*Interior space; the entire floor is slightly tilted from the entrance towards the chancel in front.*

*Eyeballs converge onto the high altar. The length of the pews are deliberately short.*

*The high altar, behind which is a 1913 mural by Leopold Forstner on the wall.*

*Free-standing high altar made with white marble; design by Otto Wagner.*

*Angels surround the canopy for the altar; at the top is a circular opening with a view maintained upwards.*

*0.5x image scaling. The large stained-glass windows on each side are by Koloman Moser. Sharp readers will have noticed a few people seated in the pews.*

The first Sunday of the month means that all Wien Museum properties are free admission for the day. I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 6 July 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

25T59 Tafelspitz: Vienna favourite at Plachutta Hietzing

E58, V06.

I’m in the mood for a slow sit-down meal of the highest order. Yeah, it’s gonna cost me, and it’ll be pasta and pesto or bread and cheese the next few nights, but it’s time here and now, that I say hello once again to Plachutta and their modern version of the imperial Tafelspitz.

There are many beef cuts to choose from the menu, but I’ll go what brought me here the first time: the Tafelspitz cut. I provided a longer and more flavourful description here, but here are today’s highlights.

*The Plachutta restaurant in Hietzing, Vienna’s 13th district. Take the U4 to Hietzing station and walk, or hop on tram 10 or 60 at Hietzing station for the 1 stop to Dommayergasse.*

“An-eighth” (0.125L) glass of Gemischter Satz (centre), a local specialty that’s grown in vineyards within and around the city of Vienna. I also have a big bottle of carbonated mineral water. Yes, drunk separately; I’m no heathen.

*Simple bread and rolls, with whipped garlic butter or regular butter.*

*The big pot, with side pots (top) with creamed spinach and fried potatoes; at lower right are chive cream sauce and apple horseradish sauce.*

*Hot savory beef broth ladled over a small bowl filled with ribbons of sliced pancake.*

*Beef marrow spread over toasted rye bread.*

*The slab of the slow-simmered rump-roast cut: simultaneously lean and fatty, moist, tender, not dry; cut root-vegetables; creamed spinach; fried potatoes; and big dollops of sauces.*

Against better judgement (which is the moment I walked in the door), I get caramel ice cream to cool off a big warm hearty meal on a warm summer day. (There’s outdoor patio seating, but they’ve got the A/C working hard inside.)

I received neither support nor compensation for this piece. I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 5 July 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

25T58 Vienna’s Eisfuchs: ice fox, ice cream

E57, V05.

Yesterday, I had lunch at one of my favourites at Yak+Yeti. Today, I revisited another favourite that’s Eisfuchs for their homemade ice cream. Nowhere as toasty as yesterday’s +35°C, today’s +25°C is plenty warm for a sweet cold treat.

Similarly to Yak+Yeti, I also discovered Eisfuchs for the first time in 2022, when I made the short walk up Neubaugasse from the 6th into the 7th district. I’ll always try something new, but every year since, I’m gonna have my two scoops: “Cheesecake Marille” (apricot cheesecake) & “Tarte Zitrone” (lemon tart).

There’s no inside seating, but there are benches on the street outside, as Neubaugasse is essentially restricted to buses, taxis, and service vehicles. I’m in the city for a month: multiple visits to the fox are an essential requirement.

*Eisfuchs, on Neubaugasse just south of Westbahnstrasse.*

*Sweet, creamy, tart, plus the crunchy bits.*

I received neither support nor compensation for this piece. I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 4 July 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

25T57 Vienna: Nepali lunch at Yak+Yeti

E56, V04.

First discovered in the living area in 2022; back there every summer since for their Nepali-Himalayan cuisine. A weekday lunch buffet with meat and vegetarian options. A nourishing glass of mango lassi. As spicy as I can handle. Not only do they have momos on their regular menu, they also have momo nights 🥟

*There used to be a lush green garden, but apparently the new owners of the larger property have other thoughts, much to the chagrin of the restaurant’s owners and its neighbours.*

*Monday and Thursday nights are momo nights: 1 price for as many momos it’ll take to satisfy the craving.*

Mango lassi; 1st course: papadams; tofu & peas in a curry sauce, pan-fried chicken wings, chicken curry, vegetable curry, jasmine rice to mop up the sauces; 2nd course (not shown): same as the 1st, but switched out chicken curry for cauliflower curry. All delicious as always, every summer since 2022.

*They’ve been around for awhile, communicating gratitude to their customers and neighbours.*

*The restaurant’s inside seating is very modest, but most of their seating is outside under cover.*

I received neither support nor compensation for this content. I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 3 July 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

25T56 Francesca Woodman at Vienna Albertina

E55, V03.

I arrived at the city in time, as a featured art exhibition was scheduled to end in less than a week. The first time I’d seen their work was in a gallery on Geary St. in San Francisco in 2011. The impact of having seen their images has long stayed with me. Almost 14 years later, I’m in Vienna’s Albertina for their 1st ever presentation of Francesca Woodman with over 100 of her photographs from the Verbund Collection.

Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) was an American-Italian artist who created an essential body of photographic work: expanding poetic ideas into the visual with the play of natural light and the use of external props (as if a stage-play); examining human beings’ relationships to the spaces we occupy; and asking questions about we view each other, particularly women. Her images provide a kind of electric charge, a sense of momentum and drive, and an overall energy that transitions frequently between the static and dynamic.

I’m a little sad she didn’t have a long life: what ideas, work, wisdom, and message could have come over the intervening years. I’m happy I found her work all those years ago, more so now that I’ve had some time to learn what she was trying to communicate and portray during those 9 special years of her life.

*Albertina: on display on the 2nd floor. The Francesca Woodman exhibition ends Sunday, July 6.*

*“From Polka Dots or Polka Dots”, from the Polka Dots series, 1976.*

*“House #3”, from the Abandoned House series, ca. 1975-1976.*

Untitled, 1979. What’s special about this pair of images: “The artist holds the skeleton of a large leaf in front of her naked back. The stalk and veins of the leaf allude to her spine and ribs, respectively, with a formal correspondence to the structure in the wall, which has been exposed by the peeling plaster layer. There’s a reference to the shape of the leaf as well as her dress’ fern-print pattern. The props are unrelated, but the artist has created a chain of references among leaf, wall, dress pattern, and her body.”

I received neither support nor compensation for this content. I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 2 July 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place vs. home

Posts tagged ‘Vienna’