City Secrets Vienna

Kicked Down the Stairs

This is where Mozart was literally booted out the door in 1781, and he never quite got over it.

1 min readSingerstraße 7

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Narrated audio from our Vienna tour

In the doorway of this building, at the gate leading into the courtyard of the , Count Arco planted a kick on his backside and sent him out into the street.

had come to Vienna that year in the service of the , who ran his Viennese headquarters here, and he was lodged with the staff. At the dinner table he sat above the cooks and below the valets, performing was only allowed with permission, and the lucrative evenings out in the city passed him by entirely.

That summer he handed in his resignation, his employer refused to accept it, and the quarrel dragged on for weeks until it ended right here in this doorway.

What followed was more unusual than the row itself, because he stayed on in Vienna with no fixed position, one of the first to attempt such a thing. For ten years it worked out well.

We cross the Kärntner Straße toward the Rauhensteingasse, where that same story came to an end.

Map showing Singerstraße 7, 1010 Wien
Singerstraße 7, 1010 WienVienna
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Sources. Story: Wien Geschichte Wiki, Stadt Wien; Mozart correspondence, Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum

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