This three-story Baroque building is decorated with gilded eagles and snow-white statues. However, it was not always like this. All the Baroque "ornaments" appeared only in 1700, when the town hall building underwent reconstruction. By that time, it was already almost 400 years old!
This house was built in 1316 by the wealthy burgher Otto Heymo for himself and his family. But Duke Frederick the Fair accused him of plotting against the royal dynasty and took the house away as punishment. Later he gave it to the city, and the Vienna administration moved into it.
The town hall was housed in this building until 1883. But 10 years before that, construction of the New Town Hall began on Ring Square. The move was necessary: Vienna had grown so much that the administrative staff had to be expanded and a more spacious building had to be constructed for it.
Today the old town hall building houses the archive and the Documentation Center of the Austrian Resistance, where photographs and documents about the deportation of Austrians from the country during the war years are kept. Getting inside the building is difficult, but possible - for example, during public events.
Be sure to take a look at the Andromeda wall fountain located in the courtyard of the old town hall building, and the Chapel of the Holy Savior - the former family chapel of the Neuburgs.
