Spittelberg & St. Ulrich: from Vienna’s wicked “Venusberg” to the chic bobo district

1070 Vienna - Neubau, 1070 Vienna - New building

© Lila Tilla Tours

Winding alleyways, well-kept houses with pretty baroque facades and cozy pavement courtyards as well as chic restaurants invite you to stroll and linger. The “Spitalberg” used to be known for its numerous, but highly disreputable taverns – or rather dives. Just outside the city gates was the not-so-sophisticated entertainment district with beer, women and song. Turks, the plague, but also people who live in beer houses and Spittelbergnimpfen will be the subject of this tour of the neighborhood.
However, we start our tour in and around St. Ulrich, the actual nucleus of today’s 7th district. Here, the baroque church dominates the surrounding “village”.

Guide

Ina Hauer
www.lilatillatours.at

Ina Hauer / Spittelberg

Some publications refer to the Spittelberg as the “Biedermeier quarter” and praise it with attributes such as “picturesque” and “romantic”. Although the Biedermeier painter Friedrich Amerling was born here, on closer inspection we don’t find much that is Biedermeier in style; in fact, most of the smaller houses date from the Baroque period. It wasn’t a bourgeois place either; after all, the main attraction on the former “Venusberg” was a sleazy dive bar and “love” here was less romantic than for sale. – So it pays to take a closer look at the history and stories of this trendy district. My aim with neighborhood tours is to constantly question clichés and scratch the pretty surface of facades in order to delve deeper into the lives of the so-called “ordinary” people and trace the changes