Directing a Natural Theatre

architects AllesWirdGut
project St. Margarethen Open Air Stage, St. Margarethen, Burgenland, Austria
napisala Vera Grimmer

 

There are places and landscapes of such intensity that they can become part of our inner landscape. One of those places is the area around the Roman quarry of St. Margarethen in northern Burgenland, quite near the Neusiedler Lake which is, not without reason, a cultural site inscribed on the unesco World Heritage List. The amphitheatre of the quarry, surrounded by forty-metre-high rocks, is the result of human activities of almost two thousand years. The limestone of St. Margarethen was used for the construction of Carnuntum, on the frontier of the Roman Empire, but also for the construction of St. Stephen’s Cathedral and palaces on the Vienna Ring Road. The quarry is still in use today, and certain sections serve solely for the continuous reconstruction of Vienna’s cathedral.