Imperial Crypt (Kaisergruft)

Historic · Innere Stadt (1st)Vienna,Austria

About 150 Habsburgs in ten cellar rooms under a Viennese friary, each generation's coffin answering the last, from tin domes to bare concrete.

The Imperial Crypt holds about 150 Habsburgs in ten cellar rooms under a Capuchin friary. Each generation saw what the one before had built and answered it. Maria Theresa had a double tomb cast in tin, big enough to need its own domed room; a few steps away her son Joseph II lies in a riveted copper chest with one small cross. Beyond them the rooms grow plainer, and one built in the 1960s has bare concrete walls shaped to look like earth in an open grave. Empress Anna paid for the friary in her will and died within months, before the foundation stone was laid; her coffin and Emperor Matthias's were carried down in 1633. After that the vault kept running out of room. When Ferdinand III died there was no space left, so his coffin was set crossways over the founders' two and the first extension was dug. The last coffin came down in 2023. Nothing stands behind glass, so you read the lettering at arm's length.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Look for the crypt's own street door, not the church's — the Capuchin church above and the vault below have separate entrances, and the church door does not lead down to the coffins.
One room is flooded with light — the domed room built for Maria Theresa is the bright exception, so its carvings and its painted ceiling are the only ones you can really read.
The same small symbols repeat from coffin to coffin — an oil lamp means a life lived in God's light, and a pelican tearing its breast is the hope of rising again.
The Franz Joseph chamber is the bottleneck — one small room holds the emperor, his wife Elisabeth and their son Rudolf, so come in the first hour if you want it to yourself.
Photographs without flash are allowed, so work with shape rather than light — the coffins are dark metal in a dim room, and the figures on the lids read best from low down.

Things to do

1
Find the trumpet that has just woken them
Stand at the foot of the double tomb in the domed room and look up. Maria Theresa and Franz Stephan have sat up on the lid, holding one sceptre between them, and behind their heads a winged figure is lowering the trumpet that woke them. Low down, an eagle carries the middle of the coffin, and most people never see it.
2
Walk the four corners of Charles VI's coffin
In the room named after him, take the four corners of Charles VI's tin coffin one at a time. Each corner has a shield, and above each shield a skull wears the crown of that realm: the Empire, Castile, Bohemia, Hungary. His daughter Maria Theresa had them added, because his coffin looked poorer than her mother's.
3
Find the one person here who was not family
In the domed room, among sixteen tombs, look for a lead chest on six curling feet with a countess's crowned coat of arms at one end. Karolina von Fuchs-Mollarth taught Maria Theresa as a child and stayed near her for twenty-six years. The inscription ends with the empress signing her own name.
4
Read the room Franz Joseph arranged for himself
Stand in the chamber Franz Joseph had built and look at the arrangement rather than the tombs. He ordered a room for three, put himself in the middle, and had Elisabeth and Rudolf moved over from an older room once it was ready. Staff dusting the coffins have found money pushed into Elisabeth's ornament and lipstick on Rudolf's.