Archduke John of Austria Mausoleum

A unique 19th-century religious building sits enthroned on the church hill in Scena village: the Archduke John of Austria Mausoleum (Mausoleum Erzherzog Johann). The slender, upward-striving structure was built by Innsbruck and Veronese artists based on plans by the Viennese architect Professor Moritz Wappler. Red sandstone and granite from the Ivigna mountain, Scena's local peak, provided the building materials. On 24 June 1869, Archduke John Baptist Josef Fabian Sebastian of Austria, the "Styrian Prince", was laid to rest in Scena.

This important Habsburg, a promoter of industry, agriculture, and railways, had died of pneumonia ten years earlier and was initially interred in a mausoleum in Graz, Austria. A year after his death, his son commissioned the construction of the Scena mausoleum. It was built in the cemetery of the Parish Church of the Assumption as a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist and completed nine years later. Archduke John's remains were transferred from Graz to Scena, where he now rests near Scena Castle, which he had acquired in 1844. You can also visit the castle.

Inside the light-filled Archduke John of Austria Mausoleum, with its slender pointed-arch windows, you'll find a neo-Gothic tabernacle altar and a window depicting the family's patron saints: Saints Francis, John the Baptist, and Anne. In the underground crypt with its ribbed vaults, stands the marble sarcophagus of Archduke John and his wife Anna, Countess of Merano. Next to them lie the tombs of their son Franz, Count of Merano, and his wife Theresa, Countess of Lamberg.

How to get to the Archduke John of Austria Mausoleum: You can reach the village quickly and easily by bus (e.g. line 231 from Merano, Scena village stop). Parking in the village is subject to a fee. The hike on the Meadow Path offers a lovely view of the castle and mausoleum.