Gardens of Decayed Vanity

Someone once used the idea of a Japanese garden to explain to me how tiny changes in perspective can mean a profound change in how you see the world. What you see depends entirely on where you are standing, and two people, who may actually be standing quite close to each other, can nevertheless see quite a different landscape, and draw a different meaning, from the same garden. In the case of the Japanese garden, this is something the designer is trying to achieve, making them wonderful places for reflection and contemplation.

I was reminded of that conversation, again, on Saturday afternoon during a visit to the Imperial Burial Vault of the Hapsburg dynasty, the Kaisergruft, in Vienna. Since childhood, I've been fascinated by these places. I'll happily while away the hours reading the inscriptions on tombs and wall plaques in churches, making connections, remembering what I know about the history of the times in which the honoured dead lived out their lives and speculating about what those lives must have been like.

I entered the Kaisergruft with my usual sense of curiosity and wonder, down stone steps to the air conditioned , sacred silence. The first thing you see are a number of identical , polished wooden coffins set in niches and slowly you eye is drawn to the increasingly ornate metal caskets of Emperors , Empresses and Arch Dukes. The grandeur of the caskets builds slowly but steadily as you move deeper into the vaults, like a grand overture. Curiosity is fed by recognition as you connect names with the history of Europe going back to the beginning of the seventeenth century and remember famous deeds, great battles won, bewigged and sashed Josephs, Goya's Maximillian , arms outstretched before a Mexican volley.

And then, something changes. Perhaps the chill of the air conditioner, perhaps a hollow sound on the modern tiles, or maybe the simple , ordered regularity of these sealed tins of decay, lined up behind alarmed railings.

Suddenly my perspective changes. Hushed reverence gives away to a vision of a warehouse of death. "Rottenness and dead men's bones" encased not in whited sepulchers but in polished bronze, copper and gold. Moving deeper and deeper into the vault, the increasing grandeur of the coffins, the grandest being the immense bulk of the baroque monument to Empress Maria Theresa and her husband Franz Stephen, does little to change the perception that this is no more than a storage space for decayed pride and vanity. A handful of smaller coffins, and the beautiful sadness of a child's effigy, causes a moment of pause but does not change my now established perception of this cold shed. Indeed, the strongest emotion they evoke is a sense that they do not belong here , that ironically, they most of all should lie in living earth under grass and blossoms.

The plaque to murdered Franz Ferdinand and his beloved Sophie, who's vein's want of thinning blue blood robbed her of the right to rot in grander company, only serves the underline the futile vanity of this place. Finally, Franz Joseph's stone box flanked by a murdered wife and the shattered remnants of Mayerling's tragedy quicken my step to the stair , the stifling heat of a Vienna afternoon welcome relief from the air conditioned emptiness.

A small change in perspective. A profound change in view.