Kollegienkirche

This guide to Kollegienkirche in Salzburg traces architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach's break from the usual Baroque playbook around 1700, favoring stark white walls, a facade that swells outward, and a soaring dome over gilded excess. Seven red marble pillars line the nave, each topped with an angel and meant to embody a pillar of wisdom for the university students who once worshipped here. Around 1800 Napoleon's army occupied Salzburg and needed somewhere dry to store feed for their horses, in a building barely a century old.