Three churches, one empress

The cathedral has stood here in one form or another for eight hundred years, and nearly everyone comes for the patterned roof or the climb up the tower.

We are here for something smaller and stranger. Below the choir lies the Ducal Crypt, and in it stand copper urns holding the intestines of the Habsburgs.

For three centuries this family was divided up after death. The body went to the Capuchin church on the Neuer Markt. The heart went to the Augustinian church beside the palace, in a silver urn. Everything else came here. Three churches, one person, a few minutes apart. We pass all three today.

Elisabeth is the exception. When she came back from Geneva in 1898 she was buried whole, and the reason for that is a good deal more ordinary than you would hope. You will hear it at the Capuchin church.

Walk around the cathedral and into the Graben, the wide street with the plague column in the middle. We are heading for the shop that supplied the court with its sweets.