Oct 12th Karlskirche

Touring Karlskirche (St. Karls Church) was a unique experience.  First of all, I never realized that the Catholic church canonizes individuals who live in such a way that he or she is thought to have a guaranteed ticket into Heaven.  That way, the church supplies many righteous exemplars.  I knew Catholics prayed to God via the Saints, but I didn't previously know how people became Saints.  Karls VI gave food and water to the sick victims of the early 1700's plague.  This was huge!  Nobody else dared go near the diseased victims.  Nor were they allowed to go to public fountains or anything similar.  Such conditions caused them to suffer from dehydration in addition to suffering the plague.  Karls' charity was greatly commemorated.  And miraculously the plague lifted!  Therefore he was canonized, and the church was built in gratitude. 

The architecture is a hybrid of Baroque and Antique.  At first glance I thought it was ugly.  I didn't understand the purpose for the clashing styles.  But consider this.  A visitor passes through a Greek temple-like entrance into the heavenly-decorated Baroque church.  It is symbolic of moving from the Pagan world into the Christian world.  Now I don't think it's ugly.  I love the clever symbolism!

Here two things stand out: (1st) the golden triangle which represents God as the source of light, and (2nd) St. Karls who is being brought into Heaven.

My favorite part of the tour was seeing the ceiling frescos up close.  Restorations were complete, but luckily for us the scaffolding was still up.  We literally climbed into the dome.  It was overwhelming to see these giant painting so close.  They were slightly stretched to compensate for the dome.  Certain highlighted colors such as the gold tint weren't applied as heavily as one might think from the ground view.  Remember everything except the glass window is painted.

 Up in the dome, looking down.