Vindobona had its decumanus aligned along the direction of the sunrise on winter solstice, and a remainder of this alignment is in the Stephansdom and ...
Wien and the winter solstice Amelia Carolina Sparavigna Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy
Abstract: Here we discuss the orientation of the Wien Innere Stadt, of the Stephansdom and Ruprechtskirche, with respect to the sunrise on winter solstice. Let us note that the Innere Stadt corresponds to the ancient Roman town of Vindobona. Probably, like some other Roman towns, Vindobona had its decumanus aligned along the direction of the sunrise on winter solstice, and a remainder of this alignment is in the Stephansdom and Ruprechtskirche orientations along this sunrise direction. Keywords: Satellite images, Google Earth, Orientation, Photographer’s Ephemeris, SunCalc. _____________________________________________________________________
Wien is the capital and the largest city of Austria. Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today, Wien is hosting many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city's centre was designated as UNESCO World Heritage Site [1]. The city's origins are in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city, and then into the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The historic centre of Wien is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, and the late-19th-century Ringstrasse lined with monuments and parks [1]. The English name of Wien is Vienna, borrowed from the homonymous Italian version. For what concerns the etymology of the city's name, some scholars consider it coming from the name of the Roman settlement. The name was Vindobona, which was probably a Latinization of the Celtic name of the site. A possible meaning is "fair village, white settlement", from the Celtic roots vindo-, "bright" or "fair", and -bona "village, settlement" [2]. In fact, evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Wien on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the settlement to guard the empire against Germanic tribes. In this period, the kingdom of Noricum (Latin name for a Celtic kingdom that included most of modern Austria and part of Slovenia) was annexed to the Roman Empire, so that the Danube became marking the border of the empire. Vindobona, as many other Roman towns (see for instance Torino [3,4]), was planned as a military camp. Its asymmetrical layout is unusual with respect to more standardised Roman encampments. The layout is still recognisable in Wien’s street plan of the Innere Stadt. These streets are: Graben, Naglergasse, Tiefer Graben, Salzgries, Rabensteig, Rotenturmstraße. As observed in [5], the oblique camp border along today's street Salzgries was probably caused by a tremendous flood of the river Danube, which occurred in the 3rd century and eroded a part of the camp. In the Figure 1 we can see the Innere Stadt and the gates of the Roman town. Note the position of the cathedral and of the Ruprechtskirche.
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2899730
Figure 2: Wien Innere Stadt and the gates of the Roman town (Image Courtesy Google Earth). Note the locations of the Ruprechtskirche (Ruprechtpl) and Stephansdom.
As we have discussed in some previous papers [6-8], some Roman towns had their decumani (the main streets) oriented along the sunrise on summer or the winter solstice. To evidence the possibility that the same was true for Vindobona, we use the map of the Roman town given in [5], superimposing it on the satellite map of the modern city provided by Google Earth through the Photographer’s Ephemeris software. This software given the directions of sunrise and sunset as yellow and orange lines on the map (it gives also the direction of moonrise and moonset as blue lines). In the Figure 2, we can see the result. The date chosen for simulation is December 21, 2015.
Figure 2: The map of Vindobona superimposed to the Photographer’s Ephemeris image. We see the yellow and the orange lines giving the directions of sunrise and sunset on the winter solstice (the blue lines are the directions of moonrise and moonset on Dec. 21, 2015).
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2899730
In fact, as shown by the Figure 2, it seems possible that the Roman town had an orientation of its decumanus along the sunrise of the winter solstice. However, there are two other evidences of such orientation. One is that of the St. Stephen's Cathedral, the Stephansdom. In the two panels of the Figure 3, we can see the alignment of this cathedral along the sunrise on winter solstice.
Figure 3: The Stephansdom is aligned along the sunrise on the winter solstice, as shown by the software SunCalc.net.
Stephansdom, that is the St. Stephen's Cathedral, is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Wien and the seat of the Archbishop. The current Romanesque and Gothic form of the cathedral was largely initiated by Duke Rudolf IV (1339–1365) and stands on the ruins of two earlier churches [9]. The Cathedral is located in an area which is just outside the Roman town; therefore, it could have been planned in agreement with an old church that was erected according to the Roman layout. And in fact, in [9] we read that “Although previously believed built in an open field outside the city walls, the new parish church was in actuality likely built on an ancient cemetery dating to Ancient Roman times; excavations for a heating system in 2000 revealed graves 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) below the surface, which were carbon-dated to the 4th century. This discovery suggests that an even older religious building on this site predated the St. Rupert's Church,
which is considered the oldest church in Vienna”. This is reinforcing the fact that the orientation of the cathedral was constrained by previous structures built on the site, that were built in the Roman period. Another interesting site is the Ruprechtskirche (St. Rupert's Church). This church is aligned along the sunrise on winter solstice too (Figure 4). As we read in [10], the St. Rupert's Church is traditionally considered to be the oldest church in the city. “The church is located in one of the oldest parts of the city, the section of the Roman Vindobona” [10]. “There is currently some debate whether the Ruprechtskirche is truly the oldest church in Vienna. Discoveries of old foundations under the St. Peter's Church and old graves under the St. Stephen's Cathedral have disputed the certainty of this label” [10].
Figure 4: The Ruprechtskirche is aligned along the sunrise on the winter solstice, as shown by the software SunCalc.net.
There is also another place in Wien having an orientation along the sunrise on winter solstice (Figure 5), but this is more recent. It is the Augarten, a public park situated in the Leopoldstadt, the second district of Vienna, Austria. It is the oldest Baroque park of Wien [11].
Figure 5: The Ausgarten and the sunrise on winter solstice, as shown by the software SunCalc.net.
In this paper, we have discussed the Innere Stadt of Wien as the ancient Roman town of Vindobona. The map of this town and a software giving the directions of sunrise and sunset of satellite images, tell that probably, like some other Roman towns, Vindobona had been aligned along the direction of the sunrise on winter solstice. A remainder of this alignment is in the Stephansdom and Ruprechtskirche orientations along this direction. References [1] Vv. Aa. Unesco. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1033. [2] Vv. Aa. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Vienna&allowed_in_frame=0 [3] Sparavigna, A. C. (2012). The Orientation of Julia Augusta Taurinorum (Torino). arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.6062. [4] Sparavigna, A. C. (2015). Roman Centuriation in Satellite Images, PHILICA Article number 547. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2742223 [5] Vv. Aa. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindobona [6] Sparavigna, A. C. (2016). Roman Towns Oriented to Sunrise and Sunset on Solstices. SSRN. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2777118 [7] Sparavigna, A. C. (2016). The Town Planning of Pompeii and Herculaneum Having Streets Aligned Along Sunrise on Summer Solstice. SSRN. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2802439 [8] Sparavigna, A. C. (2017). The Ancient Norba and the Solstices. SSRN. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2895354 [9] Vv. Aa. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Stephen's_Cathedral,_Vienna [10] Vv. Aa. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Rupert%27s_Church,_Vienna [11] Vv. Aa. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augarten
