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Sankt Marx: the Biedermeier graves and the gas tanks
heritagepost-industrial

Sankt Marx: the Biedermeier graves and the gas tanks

Mozart's lost grave, the only Biedermeier cemetery left, and four gasometers turned into a town.

Photo: Gryffindor / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Drafted by Claude — the editor hasn’t walked this one yet. We’ll update this notice once it’s been verified on the ground.

Distance

3 km

Time

~ 75 min

Difficulty

Easy

End

Gasometer (U3)

Best at

afternoon

Right now
33°C· Clear

Open in Maps for turn-by-turn, or take it offline as GPX.

Two centuries, three kilometres, and a hard cut between them. Sankt Marx is where Vienna keeps its quietest cemetery and, a short walk on, where it parked four enormous gas tanks and later moved people into them.

Begin at the Sankt Marxer Friedhof, closed in 1874 and never modernised — the only Biedermeier Friedhof left in the city, headstones tilting under unpruned trees. Climb to Mozart's memorial grave, which marks roughly where a common grave swallowed him in 1791; the exact spot is lost, and that's somehow the right note. Come in May and the lilac takes over entirely.

Then east, and the centuries lurch. The St. Marx media quarter is all glass, the T-Center's hull curving overhead; the old Marx Halle nearby still wears its 1881 cast iron from the cattle-market days.

Finish at the Gasometer — four brick drums from 1899, hollowed out and refitted as flats and a mall around the turn of this century. Walk the linked atria, look up at the riveted shells, and take the U3 home from the station built into the wall.

The route

On the map.

Elevation

53 m·83 m·156189 m ASL

Stops along the way

Things to notice.

  1. 01
    1

    Sankt Marxer Friedhof

    Start at the gate off Leberstraße. Closed in 1874 and frozen ever since — Vienna's only preserved Biedermeier *Friedhof* (cemetery), leaning headstones under old trees. If you come in May the lilac is the whole reason; the avenues go purple and the scent does the rest.

  2. 02
    2

    Mozart's memorial grave

    Up the central path, near the top of the slope. Mozart was buried somewhere in this ground in 1791 in an unmarked common grave; nobody knows quite where. The broken column and the leaning angel mark the spot the cemetery later chose. Stand there anyway — it's close enough.

  3. 03
    3

    St. Marx media quarter

    East out of the cemetery into the glass-and-steel of the media and biotech campus — the T-Center's great curved hull is the landmark. A hard switch of centuries in a few hundred metres, which is the point of doing the two together.

  4. 04
    4

    The Marx Halle

    The cast-iron former cattle-market hall, 1881, now an events and design space. Pop in if a fair's on; otherwise the engineering of the roof is the thing. A reminder this whole district was once where the city's meat arrived.

  5. 05
    5

    Gasometer

    South-east to the four brick *Gasometer* — gas tanks from 1899, each the size of an arena, gutted around 2001 and rebuilt inside as flats, a mall, a concert hall. Walk through the linked atria; the Victorian shells over the modern cores are genuinely strange.

  6. 06
    6

    Gasometer U3

    The U-Bahn station is built into the complex — you barely step outside to catch it. U3 back into the centre in minutes. End with a coffee in the mall if the contrast with the cemetery hasn't worn off.