Vienna State Opera

This guide to the Vienna State Opera traces the fate of its two architects, Eduard van der Nüll and August Sicard von Sicardsburg, who spent nearly a decade building it only to be mocked by the press and public before it opened in 1869. Van der Nüll took his own life weeks before the doors opened; his friend Sicardsburg died soon after. Look above the grand staircase for the carved profiles Vienna added afterward, a quiet apology to the men it drove to their deaths.