Pathological-anatomical collection in the Narrenturm

About this audio guide

This guide to the Narrenturm in Vienna starts with Emperor Joseph the Second's 1784 order to build Europe's first purpose-made asylum tower, after he learned Capuchin monks were hiding their own mad brethren in underground dungeons. You'll hear what daily life looked like inside its bare, chained cells over the roughly eighty years it operated, and how the round tower sat half forgotten after the asylum closed in the 1860s before taking on an entirely different second life in 1971. Listen for how a physician named Johann Peter Frank fits into that later chapter, and walk the round hallway slowly to feel how the building's two purposes sit inside the same stone walls.