Johannes-Nepomuk-Kapelle

The Johannes-Nepomuk-Kapelle once stood in the outer part of Zwischenbrücken, a small settlement cleared in the early 1870s for Vienna’s Danube regulation works. It was placed south-east of where the Floridsdorfer Bridge now crosses the Hubertusdamm, near the southern end of that bridge over the river’s main arm at the time. The chapel served people who worked at the nearby bridge toll where travel was too limited to reach the distant parish church in Leopoldau.

The simple building with a small tower was authorised in 1769 under Empress Maria Theresia and placed where travellers and workers could attend mass. Christian Volkmann was appointed as its first chaplain, and later chaplains included Hennrichs, whose tenure ended when French troops looted the chapel and its funds in 1809. Maria Theresia herself provided an endowment in 1778 to pay for Sunday and feast-day masses, and in 1785 Dr Jakob Bernhard Anton Rauch added more services, later adjusted to include Wednesday masses and Saturday replacements for feast days.

On 25 September 1814 Emperor Franz I greeted Tsar Alexander of Russia and King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia at the chapel before their peace talks at the Congress of Vienna. The inn opposite, Zu den drei Alliierten, took its name from that meeting. By 1836 the chapel was transferred to the new parish of Floridsdorf, and in 1850 it fell within Vienna’s second district. When the Danube was regulated the chapel stood in the flood zone and was bought out and demolished around 1872 or 1873.