Schottenstift

Schottenstift is a Catholic Benedictine monastery on Vienna’s Freyung, where its church faces historic townhouses and other old buildings. The complex includes a museum, school, café, and active monastic community. Its Baroque west tower rises only slightly above the church façade, giving the frontage a distinctive shape.

Henry the Second founded the monastery in 1155 after inviting Irish monks from Regensburg to Vienna. The first church stood outside the city walls and included three naves and a single apse. A fire damaged the cloister in 1276, while the Melker Reform brought Benedictine monks in 1418. Lightning destroyed the church tower in 1638, leading Andrea d’Allio the Younger and Silvestro Carlone to redesign the church. Later restoration added ceiling paintings by Julius Schmid and a high altar designed by Heinrich von Ferstel.

The museum occupies former rooms of the abbot and preserves works gathered across centuries. Its centrepiece is the Schottenmeisteraltar, a late Gothic altarpiece created around 1470. Several panels show fifteenth-century Vienna, including its fortifications and buildings such as Stephansdom. Illuminated manuscripts, gemstone-decorated liturgical objects, Biedermeier furniture, and the eighteenth-century prelate’s key add smaller human details. In the courtyard, a statue of the Black Madonna stands beside a fountain showing Henry the Second.