The monastery founded here in the seventeenth century gave its name to the whole neighbourhood, and that name stuck around long after the monks had gone.
This building didn't stay intact for long. When the appeared before the city in the summer of 1683, the defenders set fire to their own suburbs to strip the besiegers of their cover, and sat right in that zone. Little of the district was left standing, and whatever the fire spared was destroyed anyway during the siege. The church had to be largely rebuilt afterwards.
That's why this district, which is older than the of the inner city, still looks baroque. Everything you see here dates from after that year.
The street pattern that still runs through here took shape around the church, with the monastery in the middle and the market beside it.
That market lies two hundred metres further along, and it's still in business.
Sources. Story: Wien Geschichte Wiki, Stadt Wien; Bezirksmuseum Leopoldstadt, Wien Photos: Wien 1830 Vasquez Leopoldstadt, Carl Graf Vasquez, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
