Karlskirche

The plague ended in 1714 and Charles VI held an architectural competition, which Fischer von Erlach won in 1715 against Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt and Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena. The site was fixed on 11 November 1715 and the foundation stone laid on 4 February 1716. What Fischer built is a deliberate collage of borrowed authority: German Wikipedia describes the church as a link between Rome and Byzantium, its dome echoing Hagia Sophia and its two flanking columns imitating Trajan's Column, with a Roman temple portico set between them. The columns are hollow inside, cut from Zogelsdorf stone, wrapped in spiral reliefs by the sculptors Johann Baptist Mader, Johann Baptist Straub and Jakob Christoph Schletterer and crowned by eagles by Lorenzo Mattielli — an emperor's name saint given the propaganda apparatus of an emperor. Fischer died in 1723 and his son Joseph Emanuel completed the church in 1737. Unusually generous spiral stairs with newel columns flank the choir, a Roman type descended from Bramante's Belvedere stair.