Running · Penzing, Vienna, Austria · recorded with NomadTracks

Steinhof and the golden dome: a 9.7 km evening run in Vienna

Not every recorded track needs a mountain. This one is a 9.7-kilometer running loop that never leaves Vienna’s 14th district — an early-September evening, 103 meters of climbing, from a brick parish church up to what is often called the first modern church in Europe, and back down again.

The clock says an hour and thirteen minutes, and it is honest about what kind of run this was: the route passes so much that the camera came out twenty-nine times. An ordinary home loop through a thoroughly extraordinary piece of city.

Distance9.7 km
Elevation gain103 m
ActivityRunning
Duration1 h 13 min

About this data: this track and its photos were personally shared with us as samples by a NomadTracks user. NomadTracks never uploads, collects or shares your tracks or photos — your recordings stay on your devices and in your own cloud.

Route map of Steinhof and the golden dome: a 9.7 km evening run in Vienna drawn from the recorded GPS points on an OpenStreetMap basemap
The actual recorded GPS track — start marked green, finish orange. Numbered pins mark where the photos below were taken.

Download GPX Coordinates, elevation and relative times — recording dates are normalized out, photos not included.

Elevation profile of the track
Elevation profile over the full distance. Switch the map above to interactive mode, then slide across the chart — a marker follows the route.
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From Breitensee up to the Baumgartner Höhe

The loop starts on Kendlergasse in Breitensee, a few steps from the parish church — a neo-Gothic brick building by Ludwig Zatzka, finished in 1898 and consecrated in the presence of Emperor Franz Joseph I. From there the route runs west along Breitenseer Straße and then climbs, steadily and without any drama at all, for about four kilometers. The elevation profile is the honest picture of it: 239 m at the start, 322 m at the top, nothing steeper than an ordinary Viennese side street. The high point of this run is not a summit. It is a church door.

Otto Wagner’s church, at the top of the hill

The Kirche am Steinhof — properly the church of St. Leopold — was built between 1904 and 1907 to Otto Wagner’s design and is widely regarded as the first modern church in Europe. It stands on the highest ground of what was then a brand-new psychiatric hospital, and it was designed around the people who would use it: the floor slopes so it can be washed down, the pews have rounded corners, the holy water drips rather than standing in a basin. Outside, the walls are thin marble slabs pinned to brick with copper bolts — the same construction Wagner used on the Postsparkasse — and above them sits the dome that gave the hill its nickname. From a distance the gilding looks like a halved lemon, which is why the Baumgartner Höhe is known locally as the Lemoniberg. The glass and mosaics are by Koloman Moser, the angels by Othmar Schimkowitz.

A campus in the middle of becoming something else

The grounds around the church are the reason to run this loop now rather than in five years. The hospital laid out across the hillside in some sixty Jugendstil pavilions closed as Klinik Penzing in the mid-2020s, and the site is being handed over: the Central European University moved its campus into the center of the areal from the 2025/26 winter semester, and the remaining pavilions are being restored under monument protection for teaching, science and culture. On the evening this track was recorded the banners for Parallel Vienna were already up — the contemporary art fair takes over four of the historic buildings each September, and it opened the following morning. Pavilions in scaffolding, pavilions full of galleries, pavilions still empty, all within a few hundred meters of each other. It is a strange and quiet place to run through at golden hour.

The memorial you should not run past

On the lawn in front of the Jugendstiltheater stand 772 slim steel steles, each about 80 cm high with a light at the top that comes on at dusk. Each one stands for a child. Between 1940 and 1945 the Nazi clinic Am Spiegelgrund operated on these grounds, and 772 children and young people were murdered in it, classified as “uneducable”. The steles are set in a rigid grid roughly 70 cm apart, and the spacing is the point — it is meant to show the absence of any freedom at all. It is a few minutes from the church, on the same hilltop. This is the one place on the loop where the right thing to do is stop running.

Down past the stadium and home

West of the grounds the route drops to its lowest point, 222 m, and runs along the fence of the Allianz Stadion, where SK Rapid Wien have played since 2016 — 24,000 seated, 28,600 with the standing terrace, and a training pitch right against the footpath. From there it is a straight line back east along Hütteldorfer Straße through Baumgarten and Breitensee, roughly four kilometers of ordinary Viennese street, to the point where it started.

Why record a run through your own city

Nothing on this route needed navigating. The recorded line does something else: 9.72 km, one hour and thirteen minutes door to door, 103 meters of climbing, and an elevation profile whose single peak is a church. City runs are the tracks people are least likely to save and the ones they most often want back later — the loop you take visitors on, the evening the light was right. The GPX below has the coordinates and relative times for anyone who wants to run the same circuit.

About the place: Penzing, Vienna, Austria

Penzing is Vienna’s 14th district, running west from the Gürtel out to the edge of the Wienerwald. Its high ground, the Baumgartner Höhe, carries the Otto-Wagner-Areal: around sixty Jugendstil pavilions built from 1904 to 1907 as the Lower Austrian sanatorium “am Steinhof”, with Otto Wagner’s church of St. Leopold on the summit — widely called the first modern church in Europe and one of the defining buildings of Viennese Jugendstil, its gilded dome visible from much of the city. The hospital closed as Klinik Penzing in the mid-2020s; the Central European University began moving in for the 2025/26 winter semester and the pavilions are being restored for university, cultural and scientific use, while the Parallel Vienna art fair occupies four of them each September. The same hilltop holds the memorial to the 772 children murdered at the Nazi clinic Am Spiegelgrund between 1940 and 1945. Downhill to the west, in Hütteldorf, stands the Allianz Stadion of SK Rapid Wien; downhill to the east lies Breitensee with Ludwig Zatzka’s neo-Gothic brick parish church of 1898. The whole loop is on paved street and park road — a city running route, not a trail.

The neo-Gothic brick towers of the Breitensee parish church, a few steps from the start
1 · The neo-Gothic brick towers of the Breitensee parish church, a few steps from the start
A district street sign on the old brick wall along Breitenseer Straße, the chestnuts already turning
2 · A district street sign on the old brick wall along Breitenseer Straße, the chestnuts already turning
The road curving up through the Steinhof grounds, Otto Wagner’s dome already showing through the trees
3 · The road curving up through the Steinhof grounds, Otto Wagner’s dome already showing through the trees
The Kirche am Steinhof: thin marble slabs pinned to brick with copper bolts, under a gilded dome
4 · The Kirche am Steinhof: thin marble slabs pinned to brick with copper bolts, under a gilded dome
Evening sun breaking past the church at the highest point of the loop — 322 m
5 · Evening sun breaking past the church at the highest point of the loop — 322 m
The memorial to the victims of Am Spiegelgrund — 772 light steles, one for each murdered child
6 · The memorial to the victims of Am Spiegelgrund — 772 light steles, one for each murdered child
A Parallel Vienna banner on one of the Jugendstil pavilions; the art fair opened the next morning
7 · A Parallel Vienna banner on one of the Jugendstil pavilions; the art fair opened the next morning
Training under the Allianz Stadion, at the western low point of the loop
8 · Training under the Allianz Stadion, at the western low point of the loop

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