In London and New York, the open house weekend is a popular event. It is the time when the cities open their buildings that are usually close to public to visitors.
This year, Vienna held its own version of the Open House Weekend just over the weekend. It’s the first time the Austrian capital held such event in September providing people a golden opportunity to explore the city’s unique architecture. The event also allowed locals and foreign visitors access to certain important buildings.
The Vienna organizer, Iris Kaltnegger, said many interesting buildings in the city are hidden and it is for this reason that they thought about doing such open house weekend free for everyone interested to participate. Some 70 buildings were made open to the public through a guided tour.
Of the total buildings included in the tour, one-third are residential, another one-third are commercial or office buildings and the remaining are educational or recreational facilities. Some of them are the Anker bread factory, a coffin factory, the Austrian Postal Savings Bank designed by Otto Wagner and the Karl-Marx-Hof apartments built in the 1930s.
The Postal Savings Bank is where Emperor Franz Joseph had his first savings book which is till kep in a special vault containing archives. Wagner’s blueprints for the same building is also in there.
It is without a doubt that Vienna has some of the world’s magnificent buildings most of which have a rich history and date back to the olden times.
