The Hofburg Chapel

The oldest chapel in the Hofburg

If you enter the Swiss Courtyard, the oldest part of the Vienna Hofburg, through the Swiss Gate, you can access not only the Imperial Treasury but the Hofburg Chapel, the entrance to which lies exactly above that of the Treasury on the right-hand side of the courtyard. This is the main chapel of the Vienna Hofburg and its oldest. The Hofburg Chapel is also the only surviving Gothic part of the Vienna Hofburg.

It is probably Duke Albert I of Austria that has a Late Romanesque chapel erected toward the end of the 13th century, upon which today’s Hofburg Chapel is based. The first written record of the Hofburg Chapel is from 1296. In subsequent centuries the chapel is altered and extended according to the tastes of the time and of the respective ruler.

Duke Albert V of Austria, later Albert II, King of the Romans, orders the Hofburg Chapel to be extended in around 1425. Between 1447 and 1449 Albert’s cousin and heir to the title ‘King of the Romans’, who later becomes Emperor Frederick III, has the chapel converted and extended in the Gothic style.

Finally the imperial couple Francis I and Maria Theresa see that the chapel gets a Late Baroque overhaul. The modern interior with overlapping galleries dates back to this phase of construction.

The Vienna Imperial Court Music Ensemble (Wiener Hofmusikkapelle), consisting of the world famous Vienna Boys’ Choir as well as members of the male choir and orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, can be heard here. They are part of a century-old tradition reaching back to the court music ensemble founded by Emperor Maximilian I in 1498.

If you leave the Swiss Courtyard now via the back left-hand side of the courtyard in the direction of Josefsplatz, you can see another section of the Gothic façade from the next courtyard on the right at the rear of the Hofburg Chapel. You can recognise typically Gothic variations of trefoils and quatrefoils on the long, narrow windows. These are the segmented circles in the upper part of the window; when split into 3 they are known as trefoil, into 4, quatrefoil.

The trefoils and quatrefoils reveal a little of the mysticism behind medieval architecture, as the length and breadth of sacred buildings are often connected to the numbers 3 and 4, 3 denoting the godly, 4 the earthly.