St Rupert's Church (Ruprechtskirche)

In front of you is the church the Viennese regard as the oldest in their city. It is neither the biggest nor the richest, but its grey stone and squat tower speak of a Vienna before the Habsburgs, when the town barely filled the footprint of the old Roman camp.

1A legendary date and an archival one

Tradition claims it was founded in the year 740. The documents are more modest: the first reliable mention dates from 1200, in a text that already calls it Vienna's oldest church. What we do know is that its oldest walls, the nave and the lower part of the tower, go back to the early 12th century. After a great fire in 1276 it gained a Gothic apse, and the tower grew by one storey.

2Salt, boats and a saint from Salzburg

St Rupert is the patron of Salzburg and of the boatmen who carried salt along the rivers. That is no coincidence: salt, a ruler's monopoly, was sold right here, and the names of the nearby streets, Salzgries, Salzgasse and the Salztorbrücke, still remember it. From this small rise you could watch the old arm of the Danube where the barges came in.

More than eight centuries of prayer fit inside a nave that holds only a few hundred people.

3What to look for

• The tower: notice the paired Romanesque windows on the lower floors, the oldest part.
• The bare stone of the walls, free of the Baroque plaster that covered almost every Viennese church.
• The slope down towards the Danube Canal, which betrays the edge of the Roman camp.