Am Hof

This guide to Am Hof in Vienna centers on the sixth of August, 1806, when a herald climbs onto a church balcony above the square to read a proclamation, after Napoleon's crushing victory at Austerlitz forces Emperor Francis the Second into an impossible choice. It also traces the baroque column at the square's center, raised decades earlier after Vienna survived a Swedish siege, ringed by armored cherubs battling plague, famine and war. Listen facing the pale church where the herald once stood.