Gardekirche

Coming from the city centre of Vienna and the Ringstraße, you can go down Schwarzenbergplatz towards the Schloss Belvedere Palace - the road you are on is called "Rennweg". Along the Belvedere on the Rennweg side, something like a "Polish Quarter" has developed over the past century.

The "spiritual" centre of this community is the Gardekirche, a nice, small, Baroque church directly on Rennweg. You can easily spot it and recognise it as being Polish either by the bronze statue of John Paul II in front of it, or, especially on Sundays, the crowds of Polish worshippers who don′t fit into the church anymore and successfully defend the reputation of Poland for being Europe′s second-most Catholic country after the Vatican.

The Gardekirche is not only a nice Baroque church, it is also in a terribly Baroque neighbourhood: The Schloss Belvedere Palace and Gardens are to its opposite and the Palais Schwarzenberg boarders directly to it; a few metres down the Rennweg road, you find the Salesian nunnery′s church, a rather impressive chunk of Baroque with an enormous cupola. The history of the Gardekirche, however, started at a completely different location.

https://www.tourmycountry.com/austria/gardekirche-church.htm

Photo: Patkog