Catholic Church Maria am Gestade

This guide to Maria am Gestade in Vienna starts with a puzzle you can see by walking around the building: the nave and choir don't quite line up, a crookedness tied to a branch of the Danube that once ran along this exact wall. You'll hear why builders working a narrow riverbank raised a slender openwork spire here in the 1420s, and how the church later fell out of use, was deconsecrated by the 1780s, and met an unexpected fate when Napoleon's soldiers occupied Vienna in 1809. Listen for who arrived in 1812 and what it took to bring the building back.