Wotruba Church

On a hill in the southern outskirts of Vienna stands one of the most arresting modern churches in Europe: 152 raw concrete blocks of varying sizes piled at apparent random into a structure that looks like a brutalist Stonehenge. Designed by the sculptor Fritz Wotruba and completed in 1976, it is in some ways a 20th-century answer to Karlskirche — radical, sculptural, polarising.

The interior is unexpectedly luminous, with daylight filtering through gaps in the blocks. Bus 60A from Hietzing gets you there. Free entry; check opening hours, which are limited.

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A story
The sculptor Fritz Wotruba designed Vienna's most extraordinary modern church as a sculpture in concrete — 152 raw cubic blocks stacked in deliberate disorder. He insisted that the church 'should not be beautiful but had to express the search for God in our time.' He died in 1975, before construction was complete.

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