Stubentor

The Stubentor was once a gate in Vienna’s old city wall. It stood near today’s Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Platz, at the end of the Scheffstraße where the Biberstraße now runs. The first gate appeared around 1200, part of a wall built between 1195 and 1250. A black tower and an outer defensive tower called a zwinger stood beside it. The gate protected the road east from the city centre. The gate changed shape many times. After the first Turkish siege in 1529, a Renaissance-style box gate 25 metres long was built in 1555–1566, complete with a small bell tower. The wall survived the second siege in 1683. In 1831 the gate received a classical façade. By 1862 the wall had been torn down to make way for the Ringstraße, leaving only the gate’s site. Excavations in 1985–1987 uncovered part of the Renaissance wall and marked the old black tower in the pavement. Visitors can still see remains of the gate near Stubentor U-Bahn station. A metal plaque recalls Balthasar Hubmaier, burned here in 1528 for his beliefs. The station walls display fragments of the old wall and a small exhibition about the gate’s history. Mozart’s funeral procession passed through the gate on its way to the Sankt Marxer Friedhof in 1791. The site links the city’s medieval past with later changes.