An early masterpiece of modern architecture, the Austrian Postal Savings Bank was designed by Otto Wagner and built between 1904 and 1906 as a radical break from the historicist styles that filled the Vienna Ringstrasse. Its facade, clad in thin marble panels fixed with visible aluminium bolts, made a virtue of its materials and construction, announcing a new, honest approach to building that influenced architects across Europe. The interior is the great surprise. The central banking hall is a luminous space roofed in a curving glass ceiling, with a glass floor admitting light to the level below, slender metal columns and exposed riveted structure, all designed for function and flooded with daylight. Even the furniture and fittings, down to the stools and heating vents, were designed by Wagner as part of a unified whole. Otto Wagner was a leading figure of the Vienna Secession and a theorist of modern architecture, and the Postsparkasse is widely regarded as one of his finest works and a landmark in the transition from nineteenth-century ornament to twentieth-century modernism. For decades the building served its original purpose as a savings bank, and part of it has housed a museum dedicated to Wagner and the building itself, displaying original designs, furnishings and the story of its construction. The contrast between the restrained marble exterior and the airy, light-filled hall captures Wagner belief that form should follow purpose, and the building rewards anyone interested in the roots of modern design. Standing on the edge of the old town near the Ring and the city park, it sits within easy reach of the Museum of Applied Arts and the other landmarks of central Vienna. Visitors can admire the banking hall during opening hours, with the small museum explaining its significance, and the building works well as a stop on a walking tour of Wagner Vienna alongside his other Secession-era projects. Wagner intended the building to embody his belief that modern life demanded modern forms, and its honest display of materials, the marble panels, the aluminium bolts, the bare metal columns, was a deliberate rejection of the historicist disguises favoured along the Ring. Generations of architects have since made the pilgrimage to study the banking hall, and it remains a touchstone in the story of how European architecture moved from ornament toward function at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Georg-Coch-Platz 2, Vienna, Austria

Opening Date: 01/01/1906