During my trips, even if I end up in popular or famous locations that attract more tourists than other parts of the same city, I usually try to avoid squares. To me, they represent the maximum concentration of people you can encounter at once.
And if you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know that I always seek out lesser-known spots, which makes me feel like a little explorer for the next few minutes or hours.
However, since some of a city's must-see attractions are located in such crowded places, a compromise is sometimes necessary. I hate skipping out on visiting a new point of interest unless there’s a compelling reason to do so.
The weather was still grumpy, as it had been throughout our entire trip, so our motivation and energy were a bit lower than usual. That’s why we didn’t rush through this journey and instead found a beautiful spot that I believe was near a theater, where we had a sandwich before continuing our walk.
The good thing was that we didn’t need to walk more than 5-10 minutes from there to reach Stephansplatz. The Stephansdom Cathedral was on our must-see list, and we made our way there without realizing we would end up right in the center of the city.
Since our trip was in December, when many tourists were in town for the Christmas Markets, the weather conditions ended up working in our favor, allowing us to walk around without encountering large crowds.
I hadn't visited Stephansplatz before, but based on images I had seen online, I concluded that it wasn’t as bad as I had expected. For me, the definition of "bad" is when I can't take a picture without the entire scene being filled with people or when I have to constantly stop during my walk to navigate through a crowd of strangers. Happily, none of these were our situations back then.
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Click on the images to see them in full resolution
Both the cathedral and the Christmas decorations hanging here and there were the first things that caught my attention. Along with these, I also noticed plenty of shops, restaurants, and places where you could buy a hot drink to warm up, yet a comforting companion during a trip.
However, since neither I nor my friends were fans of shopping, we only visited a souvenir shop, from which we returned home with plenty of goodies for our loved ones. I usually don’t recommend buying gifts from shops near the city center or major tourist attractions, as they are typically much more expensive. However, we were quite lucky that day as the shop had plenty of great deals that we couldn’t wait to take advantage of.
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Click on the images to see them in full resolution
The square was named after the cathedral you saw earlier in images. This cathedral is not only significant to the city itself but also to the entire world, as it is one of the tallest in the world.
Even though I didn’t do the best job capturing the surroundings, one unique thing about Stephansplatz is its architecture, which blends both medieval and modern buildings which I think it's a fairly rare sight, as such places are usually preserved over time and commonly referred to as "The Old Town" or "The Old Center."
Stephanplatz is located on Street Tegetthoffstraße 2, 1010 Wien, Austria in the 1st district of the inner city next to Neuer Markt which provides many routes either with a bus or a metro which is also the one we have chosen even though we had to walk a bit until reaching our destination.
Other places I've seen during my stay in Vienna:
- The Austrian Parliament Building
- Capuchin Church (Katholische Kapuzinerkirche "Hl. Maria von den Engeln")
- The tour of the Christmas Markets from Vienna, Austria
- Stadtpark
- Shop Windows of Vienna, Austria
- Hundertwasser House (Hundertwasserhaus)
- The Imperial Crypt
- Column of Pest (The Plague Column, Vienna, Austria)
- St. Charles's Church (Karlskirche)
- Schonbrunn Palace
- The Donauturm (Danube Tower)
- Café Gloriette, Schloss Schoenbrunn (Wien, Austria)
- Wurstelprater Vergnügungspark Amusement Park
- Schönbrunn Zoo (The World´s Oldest Zoo)
- St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom Cathedral)
- The Never-Ending Fight Against Pollution at Haus des Meeres (Vienna, Austria)
- Haus des Meeres (Aquarium in Vienna, Austria)
- Historical Flak Tower Exhibition (Haus des Meeres, Vienna)
- The Magic of Stephansplatz (Vienna, Austria)
more coming soon...
Gabriela Travels is the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences. At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe. Additionally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (300+ articles written on this field), but also approaching other topics as well, like game reviews, lets plays, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 750+ blog posts. Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, owning a YouTube channel for each of the two.
~ @GabrielaTravels ~
[//]:# ([//]:# (!worldmappin 48.20859 lat 16.37336 long The heart of the city d3scr))