Carmelite monastery in Döbling

The Carmelite monastery in Döbling in exposed brick construction with neo-Romanesque style forms with its neighboring Roman Catholic basilica from 1900 was designed by Viennese architect Richard Jordan, who was specialized in church buildings.

In addition to the rich picturesque decoration of the three-bayed nave and the pulpit with the Latin Fathers of the Church, the altar of grace with the oil painting „Mary with the Inclined Head“, which according to legend was discovered in 1609 near the first Carmelite monastery in a district of Rome in the rubble, is particularly noteworthy. Already since Emperor Ferdinand II. in the 17th century, the image was worshipped by the Habsburgs. During WWI it was carried in processions through Vienna to St. Stephen’s Cathedral to pray for peace.

Also worth mentioning are the Bourbons (including the French King Charles X) from the Kostanjevica Monastery, who were transferred to the Order’s crypt until 1932. In the middle of the Battle of the Isonzo in 1917, at the request of Empress Zita, wife of the last Emperor Charles I and related to the French royal family, the Bourbons were laboriously buried in the crypt.