Looshaus am Michaelerplatz

Landmark · Innere Stadt (1st)Vienna,Austria

A Vienna corner building whose upper walls were left flat and bare facing the emperor's gate, the city stopping work until flower boxes were added.

The Looshaus faces the domed gate of the Hofburg, the emperor's palace, and that is why its bare wall gave such offence. Four marble columns carry a porch over the pavement, the two shop floors below are faced in green cipollino marble, and above them the wall runs up flat and pale with nothing over the windows. Vienna nicknamed it the house without eyebrows. The city stopped the building work half-finished, because it judged the upper walls too plain. Adolf Loos got the job in 1909 from Goldman & Salatsch, a men's tailor and clothing shop. The scaffolding came down in September 1910 and the newspapers went after the house within days. Loos gave way, hung copper flower boxes under the upper windows, and the city approved it in 1912. The two lower floors are still a shop, but most of what you see inside is a rebuild. A car dealer stripped the interior in 1938, under Nazi rule, and it was put back from Loos's drawings in the late 1980s.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Cross to the Hofburg side before you look up — Standing underneath you see only marble, because the plain upper wall vanishes. From across the paving both halves stack into one view.
Give the marble the afternoon — The front faces roughly south-west, so direct sun only reaches it from late morning. Before that the green reads almost grey and the veining goes flat.
Get close enough to one column to read the stone — It is cipollino marble from the Greek island of Euboea, named after the onion, because its pale and green layers lie in rings.
The shop on the two lower floors is the only way in — Walk in as you would any other shop, and ask before you photograph. Everything above it is private and never opens to visitors.
Sit down and look for a while — The square was rebuilt in 2024 with trees, benches and low water jets in the paving, so there is now shade and somewhere to study the front from.

Things to do

1
Trace the line where the marble stops
Run your eye up the front until the green stone stops and flat plaster begins. That edge is what the whole fight was about. Then look for the copper boxes bolted under the windows just above it. They are small, and most people who stop here to look up never notice them.
2
Step through the columns and read the room, not the goods
Walk between the four marble columns and go in. Look past the display cases at the room itself: dark mahogany panelling, more columns inside, and mirrors placed so the space seems to carry on past its own walls. If the stair to the low mezzanine floor is open, go up and look back out at the palace gate.