Capuchin Crypt, Vienna: Tomb of Emperors

The underground vault holding the remains of 145 members of Austria’s former royal family, the Habsburgs, is Vienna’s most unusual museum of sculpture and decorative arts, and a strange sort of real estate project.

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Originally a simple crypt under a Capuchin chapel, built for the simple coffins of its founders, the Kaisergruft, or Imperial Crypt, has grown over the years with added chambers under the church, under the monastery next door, and a little beyond.

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And, it’s home not only to those 145 Habsburgs, including 12 emperors, 18 empresses and other nobles by the dozen, but also to a display of some of the most over-the-top memorial sculpture, mostly rococo, in the form of elaborate sarcophagi.

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The first occupants were Anna of Tyrol and her husband Emperor Matthias, above. She provided funds for it in her will when she died in 1618; construction took until 1632 when she and Matthias were placed there.

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Some of the less-significant members of the family occupy more cramped quarters, complete with directory boards to locate them. And not all have sarcophagi; there are a number of urns containing either ashes or the embalmed hearts of Habsburgs buried elsewhere. Below, the heart of Maria Anna, who is buried with her husband, a king of Portugal, in Lisbon.

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Still fairly simple, but with more decoration, the tombs of Leopold I, Joseph I and an Archduchess.

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But then we enter an area of far more elaborate work, this one the tomb of Elizabeth, wife of Emperor Charles VI and mother of Austria’s only-ever female Emperor in her own right, Maria Theresa. Next door, the tomb of Charles VI is just as elaborate.

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Next is Leopold I, Emperor and father of two emperors. If this is starting to seem a bit confusing, the keepers of the crypt have been kind enough to supply a family tree.

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Also a bit puzzling are a few unlabeled caskets, most small, that are not labeled and even in one case, below, seem as if they were just forgotten in a corner.

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There is no chance, however, of overlooking the monumental tomb of Maria Theresa, who ruled from 1740 to 1780. She had 16 children, 10 of whom lived to adulthood. Like Queen Victoria a century later, she carefully arranged advantageous marriages and appointments extending her royal reach. The best-known, of course, was Maria Antonia, Marie Antoinette of France.

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An artisan sculptor who worked on her tomb left his mark on the work; it might be called a footprint.

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Maria Theresa’s son, Emperor Joseph II, remembered as a reforming Enlightenment monarch, lies at her feet in an intentionally simple casket. The choice fit with his ideas; he had previously ordered that all burials would use reusable coffins and that bodies should be buried naked to not waste clothes.

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As the vaults have been expanded over the years, design ideas for the chambers themselves have clearly evolved…

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One of the curiosities of the crypt is this one: the tomb of an Emperor, but not of Austria. It is the burial place of Maximilian of Mexico, younger brother of Austria’s Kaiser Franz Joseph and picked by Napoleon III of France to front his 1860s attempt to rule over Mexico. Overthrown and executed, his body was returned for burial. Oddly, many Mexican visitors leave flowers and other tokens at his tomb.

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In the next room, the tomb of Franz Joseph himself, flanked by his wife Elisabeth, known as Sisi, and his son Rudolf. Sisi, who was assassinated by an anarchist in 1898, was quite popular; her tomb is still among those gathering the most flowers and tributes.

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In the aftermath of World War I, the Austrian monarchy came to an end, and any Habsburgs who claimed the throne were barred from the country—except in death. Burials in the vault continued, including Otto and Carl Ludwig, sons of the last Emperor, Karl I and Karl’s widow, Empress Zita, who died in 1989.

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The most recent, but not perhaps the last, burial was in 2023, when the 100-year-old Yolande de Ligne, widow of Carl Ludwig died.

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