This is where the great synagogue of the Jewish quarter once stood, until had it demolished in 1670 and replaced with a church.
What came first was an expulsion. The community living here, several thousand people, was forced out of the city, and once the quarter stood empty the city council repopulated it and named it after the emperor. So carries the name of the man who sent away its original inhabitants, the very same emperor who fled the city thirteen years later when the was at the gates.
The expulsion did not last. Within a few years Vienna missed the taxes and the trade, and the city let Jewish families return little by little, until in the nineteenth century the quarter became what it was at the start of this walk.
On the facade there is a plaque remembering the synagogue, put up more than three centuries after it was pulled down.
A few hundred metres further on, a park begins with an inscription above the gate that you might want to stop and read.
Sources. Story: Wien Geschichte Wiki, Stadt Wien; Jüdisches Museum Wien, documentation on the 1670 expulsion Photos: Leopoldstadt Wien Leopoldskirche, Bwag, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
