August 14

Today, we leave the Alps and head to a place called Wiener Neustadt, a city south of Vienna in the State of Lower Austria. Wiener Neustadt literally means 'Newtown in the land of Vienna' in German language.

The sites we saw were the following: the Jewish Cemetery of Wiener Neustadt, the Wiener Neustadt Cathedral, and the Maria Theresian Military Academy.

The Jewish Cemetery of Wiener Neustadt is quite old, though not as old as the cemeteries of Eisenstadt. Most of the graves date back to the mid-1800s. A lot of the gravestones were written in Hebrew (or maybe Yiddish), some of them were written in German, and a lot of them were written in a mix of German and Hebrew with both Hebrew and Latin scripts. One of the tombstones there was for a Jewish factory owner who founded a big shoe factory at Wiener Neustadt that was later turned into a church.

The Wiener Neustadt Cathedral, like pretty much all cathedrals in Austria, was insanely massive and beautiful. The Dom, consecrated in 1279 and constructed from 1469 to 1785. The choir and transept, in Gothic style, are from the 14th century. In the late 15th century 12 statues of the Apostles were added in the apse, while the bust of Cardinal Melchior Klesl is attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini. 

The Theresian Military Academy was a 13th-century formerly four-towered castle which was later used as residence by Frederick III of Habsburg. The latter had it enlarged and the St. George Chapel built in the mid-15th century: it has notable glassworks and houses the tomb of Emperor Maximilian I. It became seat of the Academy in 1752. The current Military Academy was founded by Maria Theresa on December 14, 1751. Destroyed during World War II, it has been rebuilt to the original appearance. It is one of the oldest military academies in the world.