The area on Stephansplatz around the cathedral was originally a graveyard – making it the ‘dead centre’ of Vienna in a very literal sense. But with plague and influenza epidemics striking Europe in the 1730s, Karl VI ordered the graveyard to be closed and henceforth Vienna buried its dead beneath Stephansdom in the ‘New Tombs’, which in the 19th century became more wistfully known as Katakomben (catacombs). You can only enter on tours.
