The glass bathtub

Otto Wagner, the architect behind much of turn-of-the-century Vienna, kept an apartment in this block that he fitted out himself, and its showpiece was a bathroom with a tub made of glass.

 

He had shown that tub back in 1898 at the big exhibition celebrating the emperor's fifty years on the throne, along with the rest of the bathroom and a bedroom. Once it was over, the whole setup moved here. Glass showed that the water was clean, and in those years hygiene was the kind of idea that let you feel ahead of your time.

 

Wagner was married and lived with his family in a villa on the edge of the city, so this place was meant for the evenings when the trip home after the opera felt like too far. His contemporaries found that combination of a glass bath and a second address in town exactly as suggestive as it sounds.

 

From here it is less than a hundred metres to the market, where a river runs beneath the stalls.