The Virgilkapelle (Virgil Chapel) opened at the end of last year and even though it is slap in the middle of the city (located next to St. Stephan’s Cathedral it couldn’t be more central), I only recently managed to visit. The museum is part of the Wien Museum (those of you in Vienna will recognise their distinctive marketing font).
The museum is unusual for a number of reasons, the first of which is that you enter through the underground station. You go down the escalators, past the bakery in the station and before you hit the Wiener Linien customer services: museum of the middle ages.
Curious as this is, there is a reason. The museum is housed in a 13th century chapel that was rediscovered in the 1970s as the underground was being built. The story of the discovery, the work of the archaeologists onsite and the research that has been carried is an integral part of the narrative throughout both the chapel section and the small exhibition that is in an adjacent room.
The chapel itself has been left empty, there is no interpretation at all in this part of the museum. However, there is a very comprehensive multimedia guide on an iPad that each visitor is given with headphones as they enter, that explains in depth with illustrations, music and architectural plans the history of the chapel, what is known and what is not known and how. Some of the sections are a little long, but the content is interesting and accessible, pointing out details and aspects that I would most certainly have missed otherwise. After buying your ticket, the tour starts before you go down the staircase, first offering an overview as you view the chapel from above.
The only depiction of a human face in the chapel, at knee height and would have definitely been missed it I hadn’t paid attention to the guide.
There is a separate section with a more general look at life in mediaeval Vienna, including artefacts found during the excavation, both the religious and social life of the people building the cathedral and chapel and those who worshipped there and lived nearby.
The tiny museum does a great job of offering a broad range of information at varying levels of detail. Tablets in the exhibition section also offer visitors the choice of where they would like to explore further. The objects are displayed in relation to these information points and surrounded with small snippets from documents that also relate to the topic in hand (for example, a section on the tablet about diet had some seeds and fishbones that had been found nearby in a vial along with an illustration from a manuscript that shows someone fishing). It’s almost like those flats in Ikea, that has everything you need but compact, looks nice and is very well-planned with some hidden extras.
I’m planning to head back again in the heat of summer to see what it’s like when a few more people are in there at once (it was basically empty when I went) and if it’s a cool oasis of calm I’ll be there more often as my Museumbund membership allows me free entry.
Also, despite being built into a tube station, the chapel and museum are accessible for wheelchair users and step-free, but is a little bit more complicated. Ask at the entry desk or visit the barrier-free info on the website.
Adults - €5 (incl. multimedia guide), under 19s - free. Free the first Sunday of every month.